Moonlight and Adamantium
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: Joke’s on Me prequel.Wolverine’s gone to the Great White North to forget one redhead mask & finds another. Harlequin’s an NYC girl in a jam who's mad, bad & dangerous to know. Are they going to make beautiful trouble together? You better believe it, bub.
1. Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know REVISED

Chapter One: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous To Know

British Columbia, Canada, Summer 1970

I: Liv

I used to be able to keep it all together, yunno.

There was the shit I saw, and the shit I did, and it never bothered me.

I always thought that I was a psychopath, like the Old Man, and boy do I hate being wrong.

Maybe I am a psychopath. Just not completely.

I'm falling apart. Goddamn doctor and his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Run a few more tests. Take these pills. You need help, or you'll end up, end up like what? Those guys just back from Nam who sit numb in front of a television washing down their Thorazine with whiskey?

But you have to do it. Think of how you're wasting your brilliant mind.

Wasting my brilliant mind. Fuck you. Thorazine won't waste my brilliant mind? The Old Man up in Arkham, he never takes his medicine. You fucks can't pull one over on Jack Napier, and you sure as fuck can't pull on over on his little girl, either.

Yeah, I got a brilliant mind. All jacked up like a Boeing 747 roaring in my ears, all the time. Jet engine mind going on and on at me.

And you just think you can make it stop?

Fuck you and your talking cure and your Thorazine. I'm going to tough this shit out, I'm just gonna live with it, and when I finally do get my shit together, I'm gonna be so goddamn diamond hard, nothing's ever going to get to me like this again.

That was the plan.

The only thing I hadn't thought of is that when you're drunk all day, every day, and you're walking on the thin edge of insanity, you don't make good decisions.

But then again, some people would say I never did.

But, yeah, things being what they are I should have never listened to Slim MacLeod. But you know me by now, I'm always thinking with the little head, not with the big head, so all I was thinking of was how Slim had a cock like a horse and we had some history and he always knew where the cheap booze was, so you bet me and him were in the old '63 Wildcat and on my way from Wayne Manor to Toronto as fast as I could make up a good lie so Bruce wouldn't worry about me.

He didn't believe me. But I think he was grateful I made the effort.

And I expect you know me well enough by now to know that if there's a way for bad luck and trouble to find me, or for me to find them, I'll do it. Me and Slim had about a week or so in TO, hanging around Kensington Market with the rest of the freaks and getting hammered and balling it up in his shitty little apartment before he painted me this beautiful picture of the Great White North in the summertime and how I had to see it.

I figured maybe I could t some peace of mind and get my head together.

That's the thing about weasels. Show me a good honest big, bad motherfucker, any day of the week and I'll show you a man you can know exactly what he's gonna do and when he's gonna do it.

But these fucking cowardly weasel bastards they always wait for you to show them a weakness, they wait until you got one leg to stand on and then they knock it out from under you, and leave you to die slowly like a dog that's been hit by a car on the side of the road.

Goddamn Silm, the motherfucker, he left me on the side of the road, way the fuck up near Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory.

After everything I did for the sunnuvabitch.

He stole three grand in cash from me, a case of Newcastle Brown, two bottles of Jack Daniels, a brick of grass, and all the clothes I had in my suitcase. The only reason I still have the car, a change of clothes, boots, a coat, my guns and my wallet and passport and shit is because I never trust a man who's crazy enough to lie down with me, and I always sleep in the locked car, and my knapsack never leaves my sight.

It's good to be paranoid. Somewhere, underneath the bad dreams and the flashbacks and the breakdowns and all this shit I don't need, I'm still me.

I'm still in here, somewhere.

Still I was broke and I might as well have been on the fucking moon. Took me a long time to make it to the next town. And after I got my shit together again, considering the circumstances, I could have gone into town and phoned Bruce and asked him to wire me some money. Or I could have pushed this button on the bracelet the Doc gave me and zapped myself to Washington, but I'll be goddamned if I have to run home to Daddy every time shit doesn't go my way.

I got myself into this bullshit, I figured, and I'll get myself out of it.

That'll give me something to do. You gotta get your sanity back real fast when you're in a life or death situation.

Funny how you can't always get what you want, but you just might find, you get what you need.

So, after I was straightened out, I got hold of the twenty American dollars stuffed into the holster in my bra, and so I got some gas and a map at a station and headed out on the road.

I didn't have a plan of how I was going to make it back to TO, put Slim on ice, then get home to New York from the fucking Yukon on twenty dollars, and I probably shouldn't have been spending any of it on booze, but when you eat something, you have to drinkm and the place had Pepsi and no Coke, so what was wrong with a beer?

It was when I was having one goddamn beer and the worst fucking sandwich I had ever choked down at some hick joint that looked like it used to be a barn that I figured out how exactly howI was going to make enough money to get back to TO and kill that son-of-a-bitch Slim MacLeod. I mean I had nothing against him splitting the States to save his ass, but he shoulda got a goddamn job in Toronto instead of a habit, then he wouldn't have been in the spot he put me in.

He's never shoulda put me in that spot.

Now he's gonna die for it, the son-of-a-bitch.

Hard.

Anyway, there I was, eating a shit sandwich and drinking some lukewarm piss that pretended to be beer when this this king-sized redneck motherfucker, or whatever they call them in Canada, he decided to show up and give me a hassle about my ensemble and my tattoos.

Son of a bitch. It's not enough for these cocksuckers to get on guys' asses about having long hair, if you're a woman and you're not wearing a pink dress and making a cake for the, barefoot in a kitchen, they can't leave you alone, either.

I warned the motherfucker to leave me alone, that I wasn't in the mood for his shit, but guys like that, they always have to press their luck.

Son of a bitch called me a pussy.

Me.

To tell you the truth, I was in just the mood to show somebody how we do things in Brooklyn, and I wanted to see if I was up to speed again, so I asked him if he wanted to take it outside.

He wasn't too fond of the idea until I told him that just because you had a pussy it didn't mean you were a pussy, except in his case.

Naturally I handed the son-of-a-bitch his ass, and two or three guys had to pull me off him so I didn't beat the dumb asshole to death. Anyway, as I was on my way back to my car, this little guy in a trucker hat gives me fifty bucks Canadian.

"What's this?" I asked.

"We had a bet going against you. We lost." He tells me.

You bet your ass I took the fifty. I marched right back into the bar and I bought a gallon jug of Yukon Jack and a case of Labatt's stout and the first decent meal I had in three days, and this one guy who didn't have the money to cover his bet paid me in a half a carton of Luckies, no filters.

I was on the road again, doing about eighty and having a beer and a smoke with Muddy Waters on the tape deck when I got the idea that if I was going to go from one-horse town to one-horse town and get drunk and fight, I might as well make money on it.

So that was how I made my way from the Yukon down to British Columbia. I'd find a place to camp where I could get the Wildcat down a trail where there was some water nearby, and I'd go to a few places around the area, a few little one horse towns, and take bets on me versus the biggest bastard they could find in a bare-knuckle fight. When I had enough money to eat, travel, smoke, fill up the tank and get some more booze, I'd move on.

But I only drank when I was travelling. When it was time to go to work, I just let it go. I gotta drink to stay sane, but do I need to be sane to camp in the woods and beat up assholes for money?

Fuck no.

I let it go. I let it all go. That whole civilisation trip, it never suited my Old Man, even before Bruce dipped him in the chemical stew, and it don't suit Liv Napier, either.

It was easy to let it all go. Everything became simple. Wake up, eat food. No food? Get food. Get gas. Get smokes. Go back to camp. Eat food. Wash clothes. Maybe read for awhile. Smoke. Think about things. Eat some more. Get ready for the fight. Get mad. Go fight. Make money. Go to sleep. Wake up. Eat food…

It feels good not to think, not to reason, not to use my big brain and my huge IQ and wash up and play nice and say please and thank you. I'm living the way some small, mean little mammal, like a badger, lives in its burrow. I come out, I forage, I kick some ass, I go back in.

Which brings me to right exactly now. I'm camped in the woods outside some little shitbox logging town, and I just had a fight last night and I'm getting ready to break camp and roll across the territory until I run out of money, again. I suppose I should be hoping to get my ass to Alberta on this wad, but you never can tell, and just right now I'm not too worried about it.

Because I could go on like this forever. It's nice here, quiet, nobody around, and today's a lovely day. Sunny. Warm. The grass under me is cool and the sun feels good on my skin.

I am naked and I am not ashamed.

Maybe I do want to get myself back to the garden.

How many more battles will I have to fight, how many more guys will I have to kill?

If I stay out here long enough, I'll bet you all those goddamn flashbacks and bad memories and the whole shebang will all just disappear.

Sure, all my good memories will go, too, but just right now, laying here naked in the grass and looking and the beautiful sun in the beautiful sky, I don't care.

Did I tell you my mind is like a jet engine, roaring and screaming and going on and on at me all the time? It never stops. Not when I'm drunk, not when I'm sleeping. Never. How many tiny discrete thoughts assail my consciousness ever moment?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

A million tiny thoughts every second, every minute a millennium, every hour an eternity.

I can't stop it and I can't stand it.

I want peace.

I'm tired of being Liv Napier, and I'm tired of being the Harlequin, and I'm tired of being a genius, and I'm tired of being a human being.

Tired, and I want peace, and my shoulder still hurts.

But the sky is so blue, the trees are so green, the water is cool and the sun is so warm.

It's a beautiful day to be a little animal in the big, wide woods.

Maybe if I stay here long enough, it'll all just go away. I'll just leave the car, let it rust, forget how to drive it. I won't think in words anymore, because I won't remember what they are. I never hunted anything for food, before, but I learned fast. I'll bet I can learn to hunt without guns.

And the clothes will rot off my back and the shoes will rot off my feet and I'll wander away from here, deeper into the woods, to be with the other animals. Quiet and peaceful and unknowing, just a happy little monkey again, laughing in the trees.

Wait a minute.

What's that noise?

It's a passing car, on the road up there.

It's a hiker on a distant trail.

It's a hunter somewhere over the hill.

It's an animal.

No. No it isn't. Those are footsteps.

Human footsteps. Coming closer and closer.

Heavy footsteps.

I'll bet it's a man.

Yeah, it's a man. I can smell him in the air.

Jesus, what am I saying I can smell him in the air? Well I've spent most of my life among men, and I've been with enough of them, I know how they walk and what they smell like, don't I?

There's a man coming down here.

Coming for me.

I don't know who he is, or what he fucking well wants and I don't have my clothes and I don't have my guns but I don't need them.

I've killed with my bare hands once before, I can do it again.

Who's that coming into my burrow?

Who dares?

If it's trouble he wants, he's going to get it.

I'll just go into the brush, and I'll wait for him.

That's what I'll do.

Yeah.

Wait.

Wait?

I think I know that smell.

Hell, I think I'd know it, anywhere…

II: Logan

Thinking about it, looking into the bottom of the rapidly emptying beer mug, Wolverine realised he'd been making some lousy decisions, lately.

First, it was probably not a good idea, stealing Cyke's car.

He was only going to take a little joyride, that was all.

Get his mind off his troubles.

Just a little joke on the kid. Bring the car back at the end of the weekend. I was just testin' the new truck out for ya, Scott. No, that ain't a dent, it's a sign of character.

Nothing else helped. Telling himself that almost every woman he ever got mixed up with died, violently, didn't help. And telling himself that Jean was just a kid and he was old enough to be her great-great fucking grandfather didn't help, and what Professor X told him about accepting things didn't help and all the goddamn booze he poured down his throat didn't help, either.

It would have helped that if at the same time that the words coming out of her mouth said 'Aw, gee, Logan, you're like a big brother to me but I'm just so in love with Scott' the way she held her body and the look in her eyes weren't saying 'disregard the words coming out of my mouth, I love you, Logan, I need you, I want you, I'm obsessed with you, I never met a man like you, you're the one I've been waiting all my life for, fuck me, fuck me now, oh please, please, please.'

Women. You could get into a lot of trouble paying attention to what they said with their walk instead of listening to their talk.

Just look what happened to Eddie Blake. Fucked up his whole life, almost killed America's Sweetheart, and then got a book written about what an asshole he was.

Then Sally forgave him.

Women.

Go figure.

Logan smiled to himself, thinking about how it was Cyke's car he took for his joyride. Still, he had never meant to take it from New York all the way to BC, that was for damn sure.

But Mel, she was different.

At least, he thought she was.

Another rule.

Don't touch the students.

Well, he never touched the students.

But Mel, she was goddamn twenty years old.

Jesus, Charlie, what do you want me to do? They're all over me. Now how did that combat move go, Mr. Logan? Was it like this?

That's not combat, baby.

And what that little girl could do to a man.

You old Canucklehead, she's a goddamn Nymph, an honest to God nymph and she looks like the girl on the "St. Pauli Girl" bottles.

What the hell did you expect?

What was it Professor X told him? About him having a weakness for a damsel in distress?

Yeah, she was a damsel in distress, alright. Nobody else could see that in Yukon Mel, but Logan could.

Distress. Giving him a wild look in those big blue eyes while she unbuckled his belt.

Almost ran the truck into a goddamn tree.

Damsel in distress, alright. She sure made him feel stupider than he'd felt in a long time.

What Nymphs have, pretty much, is the power to cloud men's minds.

Logan looked into the bottom of his glass.

Hell, all women have the power to cloud men's minds.

Hello titties and goodbye brains.

Yeah, and if I hadn't been blind, stinking, drunk for two months, I may have been thinking more clearly. That's what's clouding my mind.

That and Jeannie.

I dream of Jeannie with the long red hair.

Whiskey and women, Jesus H. Christ.

But, what was gone was gone, and Cyke's car, and the girl, and everything he had taken with him when he left except the clothes on his back and the boots on his feet and the fifty bucks he kept under the insole of the left boot were gone, too.

Slept right through it, too, woke up in the hotel room hugging the pillow.

Still, he kind of wondered if she was okay, and she had made it to Vancouver, safely.

Charlie said it was his job to protect his students, after all.

Maybe she had an explanation.

It wouldn't be the first time he walked across North America, though, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

He figured he was overdue for a vacation, anyway.

Maybe it would clear his mind.

Especially when he ran out of money.

A little man with a limp interrupted his reverie.

"Hey, shorty? You wanna get in on the action? For the fight?"

"Who the fuck are you callin' shorty, bub?"

"No offence, pal! I'm not exacty Goliath, here, myself. I just wanted to know if ya wanted to put some money on the fight. Some little American girl smaller'n both of us is gonna fight Big Tim in the back room."

"Oh yeah? Where's she from in America?"

"Brooklyn, New York."

"Yeah? Red-haired broad? Built like a brick shithouse? Lots of tattoos?"

"That's her. You know her?"

"Everybody in New York knows her, bub."

Logan had twenty dollars left, after he paid for his beer.

He fished it out of his pocket.

"I'll put twenty on the girl. Double or nothing."

She might need a hand, and he did have twenty bucks in it, so he grabbed his beer and followed the man who'd taken his bet into the back room.

Time for another damsel in distress.

When he saw her, he felt sorry for Big Tim, whoever he was.

"Yeah, that's her. Every time I see her that mad, I think I'm in love."

The man with the limp just looked at him, slack-jawed in disbelief.

"What can I say, bub? I like my women bad. And mean. And red-haired."

"Well, she sure has all of them covered, mister."

People used nice words like feral and atavistic to describe him, and they used not-so-nice words like vicious fucking mad dog animal, but those words didn't quite cover the girl in the Army-issue men's tank top and boxer shorts with new dirt and bloodstains covering up the old.

And this little red-haired girl even shorter than him, she was mad, bad, and dangerous to know, the kind of woman whose hair was red because it was made from the hellfire in which the Devil had forged her.

She was so goddamn mad her nostrils were flaring and she was snarling, snarling like a wild beast. She hopped from foot to foot, slamming one fist into the other, cursing and muttering to herself. Almost gibbering, like somebody who had gotten used to being alone and talking to themselves because there was nobody else to talk to. A terrible grin that could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and turn your blood to ice cubes split her face in half, big red lips, red as the rope of long red hair that swung down almost past her ass. Her green eyes were going yellow with rage and he could see all the muscles in her strong, stocky, compact body tensing and twisting and roiling underneath her skin.

And when you looked in those green eyes gone all sick and yellowy, there was nobody fucking home.

Big Tim didn't have a chance.

The poor bastard was still staring at all the tits and ass on display in that undershirt and shorts when the girl came roaring out of her corner and the first shot from her tattooed arm exploded into his solar plexus with such force that Big Jim's chest seemed to cave in around her hand.

For a minute, Logan thought she'd put her hard little hand right through the big bastard's body.

The girl may not have ripped his guts out, but she wiped the floor with him. The spectators had to stnd back so they wouldn't get drops of Big Jim's blood all over them. She hit him hard and she hit him fast and she hit him again, and again, and again, relentlessly.

Big Jim only got a few hits in before he was kissing the floorboards.

They were hard hits, too, from a big man's big fists that he was throwing in sudden fear and panic that something so much smaller than him could inflict such a powerful hurting on him.

The kid shrugged them off like a fly buzzing around her head.

She had a hard time turning it off, too; you could tell she was disappointed the poor bastard went down so fast.

He was smart enough to curl up in a little ball and start to cry like a little girl, and put his arms over his head and beg her to please quit hitting him.

That stopped the kid cold, and although she cursed him in language that would make a sailor blush, she walked away from him.

She looked at Logan, quizzically at first, but then she grinned at him in an unsettling way, and raised her glass to him.

After the fight she let her hair down and put on a pair of dirty Levis over her boxers and put her boots on and sat at the bar, doing shots of Yukon Jack and spitting blood onto the floor in her equally dirty undershirt.

Her eyes darted around the room, wild and feral under that long red hair, looking for somebody to move on her so she could kill them, stick her fist through their body and tear out their spines.

She wasn't happy with wiping the floor with big Jim, this girl wanted to fucking kill somebody.

She pounded on the table with a tattooed fist and yelled for the owner.

"C'mon, ya cocksucker, ya better pay me or I'll fuck this place up, good!" she snarled in a gravelly and menacing Brooklyn accent, hoarse from disuse.

She left in a hurry and Wolverine followed her out in time to see a black '63 Wildcat tearing out of the lot, kicking up gravel and dirt in a cloud.

She was the Harlequin. A mask operating out of New York City who did the real dirty work, and when she was out of costume, whooped it up like your typical Brooklyn Irish thug.

Nobody would know to look at her, but she was the mad genius type. Her father was the Joker, she was the Bat's ward and she worked for Dr. Manhattan in Washington, and none of them could do anything to rein her in.

He'd seen her last in a bar upstate, and the beer he'd bought her was interrupted by four men trying to rob the joint and kill any witnesses.

A plan that didn't go too well for the robbers.

You see, Logan was the best at what he did, but what he didn't wasn't very nice.

Then again, what the Harlequin had done wasn't too polite, either.

Big Tim was lucky he didn't hit the Harlequin in any way that really made her mad.

But Harlequin was a New York City girl, what was she doing in a half-assed bare knuckle prize fight in a dive in BC?

And the last time he saw her, she was a little crazy and a little drunk, and she did what she had to do when some shitheel put a gun in her face, but she sure as hell wasn't most of the way towards savagery or insanity, or both.

Something had happened to her.

Something real bad.

Logan watched the car drive off, and lit up one of the five cigars he had left.

The little man with the limp came out and gave him two hundred and fifty dollars.

"What's this for, bub?"

"You won it, bettin' on that hellcat. Hell, I ain't never even heard of anything like that."

"Yeah, me neither. And I've seen some shit. How's that guy in there?"

"Doctor's with him. Tim'll be alright. Shit, I ain't worried about Tim. Must be something wrong with that girl."

"I know her. We, ah, we work in the same business."

"Well, you better go after her, mister. Somebody gotta help that poor girl."

"Does she really look like she needs help to, you, bub?"

"Yeah. The kinda help you get in the nuthouse."

In the nuthouse. Like her father.

"Can't have that. I'll have to try and reason with her."

Wolverine started tracking her, sniffing for her scent in the air and crouching down to look at her tire tracks.

Harlequin was crazy before whatever happened to drive her right to the edge, and she was in the mood to dismember first and ask questions later, but there wasn't anything she could really do to him, and goddamn, she still smelled good.

Real good.

Like a red-headed angel from Hell.

Another damsel-in-distress, here we go again.

***

He tracked her all night before he found where she was camped.

She was nowhere in sight, but her car was there, and she had a box of supplies up in a tree and drying clothes hanging on a branch.

Her scent was everywhere, all over everything, almost like she'd been spreading it around, purposefully to keep the other animals away.

There was a fire pit in which the ashes were still warm, and underneath them were layers upon layers of cold ashes. A regulation mess kit was still sitting on a stump, neatly packed away.

The kid had been camped here for awhile, and the way she had her meagre gear lying around, she wasn't far.

She also hadn't been in anything close to a rational state the night before, and he didn't know in what stage of berserk the morning would find her, so Logan figured he'd better approach gently and keep talking and hope she remembered who the fuck he was.

Not that she could really do him any permanent damage, but, to date he'd never had his spleen torn out by a woman, and he didn't want today to be the first time.

He put both of his hands where she could see them, and sat very slowly down on the tree stump.

"Harlequin? It's Wolverine. You remember me, don'tcha? I'm not gonna hurt you, alright? I saw ya fight last night and I been walkin' since then, trayin' to find you. I'm kinda in a jam, myself. I'm on my own out here, and all I got is the clothes on my back and the boots on my feet. If you could let me have somethin' ta eat and maybe sleep here awahile, I'd be much obliged. It's a long walk back to New York."

Her red head popped up out of the bushes, and she had a slightly more rational look in her eyes.

"You crazy, Logan? I may be nuts, but I ain't got fuckin' amnesia. Why wouldn't I know youse?"

"Hey, I saw you in the bar last night. You didn't seem like you knew anything, anymore."

"Yeah. I been in a real bad way. I don't have much, in the way of food, or dough, but I got more than you have. I was kinda just dozin' off in the grass back here after I took a bath. Coudja throw me those clothes hangin' on the branch?"

She came out dressed, and she had a dazed look on her face, like she wasn't sure what the fuck was going on, but she looked glad to see a familiar face.

"I thought that was you in that shithole last night. I mean, who the fuck else looks like you, Logan? I was gonna ask ya if youse wanted to have a drink with me, but you looked like you were in a real shitty mood."

"Bein' on foot, sleepin' rough and eatin' when you can will do that to you, kid."

"Well, I don't have much. But I was about to have peanut-butter and jelly, a smoke, and a beer for breakfast. I'll go raid the supply box."

Logan was hungry, he hadn't eaten anything the day before, and before he knew it he'd eaten a whole loaf of bread and a whole jar of jelly and a whole jar of peanut butter, not to mention drinking three beers.

"Shit, I hope you got more food."

"Well, I got two hundred, altogether, with the money I made last night. I can get gas and food."

"I'll throw in with you, Liv. I made two-fifty bettin' my last twenty on you. It beats walkin', and I know this country a lot better than you do."

"I guess you do. When does it get to be winter?"

"Winter? Here? Sooner than you think. The end of September. Which doesn't give you a whole lot more time to fuck around pretending to be a mountain man. I used to be a mountain man right around here, and your survival training you got from the Bat got you this far, but you're a New York City girl. It sure as hell won't get you through the winter. You got six weeks, kid, and then you're gonna die out here."

"I never thought of that. I'd have to find shelter pretty quick when winter came. And I can't say my survival training extends to building a cabin in wintertime."

"Mine does. And hunting, and fishing and all the rest of it. Yours should. You seem pretty strong, I think you could take it. If you really want to be Liv Napier of the Great White North, fine. We'll stay. I got all the time in the world. It's kind of like throwing Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch. But the Bat would never forgive me if he thought I let you alone out here. You remember Bruce, don't you? And what about the Doc, in Washington? And his old lady, she's your buddy, right? I'll bet there's a lot of people in the States tearin' their hair out, wondering just where the fuck you got to."

"I hadn't thought of that. But I ain't been thinkin', lately. Not rationally, anyway."

"It'd be a hell of a lot easier just to put our money together and go back to New York. I don't know about you, but I've gotten kinda attached to cold beer, a warm bed, TV, and the A & P."

"Sounds pretty good. Jesus, I haven't seen a fuckin' bed since I don't know when! I'm like Davy fuckin' Crockett, out heah. And you gotta point, Logan. Jesus, I gotta get back to Toronto, find that cocksucker who burned me for three grand. And I gotta go home. I got work to do at the lab, I got a class to teach in September. An' Bruce says he's gonna apprentice me to another mask, and I think he means Eddie. What the fuck have I been thinkin'? This shell shock shit, it's fuckin' with my mind. That and drinkin'. And not drinkin'. And bein' alone. Jesus, I'm so fuckin' glad to see youse! I'm sorry I sound nuts, but, yunno I haven't said more than ten words to anybody for, I don't even know how long its been? That shrink was right. I'm losin' my marbles. And to think I went on this trip for my mental health."

Liv chuckled and took another sip of her beer.

Logan frowned.

So that was it. The poor kid was fucked up in the head, and she came North to clear her mind, with some loser asshole who took advantage of her, and left her flat in the middle of an unfamiliar country, with any luck to die like a dog on the side of the road.

"You'll be alright, kid. Especially after you kill that cocksucker. Hell, I'll help ya. It beats walkin' back to New York. And I been shell-shocked so many goddamn times, the way they've fucked with my head? Just don't let 'em give ya any drugs. Trust me, there's more to that shit than they tellya."

"I guess you get this flashback shit all the time."

"Almost every day, Liv. You just gotta live with it. If you can get through it, it passes. You just can't let it get to you. Everything does. So, you got a game plan, here?"

"Kind of. I was gonna break camp today, and see if I could make it to Alberta before I had to stop again, but I've been thinking, if you could make two hundred-fifty on twenty, and I'm sittin' on two C-notes, if you bet the farm on me, double or nothing, plus what I get when I win, we could get enough bread together to get going. You know, so we can eat and drink and live like people. Go to campsites. Buy a tent and some fuckin' sleeping bags. Eat at diners. Get a case of beer. Maybe even get a room, someplace, once in awhile. Normal shit. And I can get out of the fight business, before I lose my mind."

"I thought you were in the fighting business, Liv." Logan chuckled.

The way she laid it out, it sounded like a pretty good ride back to the States.

"I am. But to knock these chumps around the way I do three nights a week, without getting my ass handed to me, I hadda get a little extra edge on. When I look at these big dumb bastards, I think about every big dumb bastard who ever tried to push me around. Yunno how that is. And I think of Slim, in Toronto, who took me for two grand and then some, and left me flat in Whitehorse about five weeks ago. But that's not quite enough, yunno. So I got an extra edge, going. I ain't been laid in five weeks. Five fuckin' weeks! And I haven't been jackin' off, either. Man, I'm telling ya, Logan, if I don't get to pop my cork, soon, I am gonna fuckin' kill somebody."

That last little piece of information tripping blithely off the lips of this little red-headed well-stacked maniac caused Wolverine to swallow a mouthful of smoke and begin choking.

"You okay, man?"

"You don't beat around the bush, do you, kid?"

Liv laughed.

The family resemblance was somewhat disquieting.

"Well I sure as hell hope you do, cos lemme tellya, it's burning. I'm sendin' out fucking smoke signals ovah heah. I gotta keep it together until tonight, after the fight, and then…"

She laughed again.

"Well you know what they say, darlin'. Ass, grass, or gas, nobody rides for free. And I'm flat broke and I don't smoke weed. And you sure smell good to me." Logan said.

The Harlequin gave him the old once-over, looking him up and down like he was a car she was planning on buying.

"You wanna kick the fuckin' tires?" he asked.

"I was just wonderin' how much horsepower the engine's got."

"Just as much as you got in the Wildcat."

"Yeah, but I worked on that engine, myself. You smell pretty goddamn good yourself. Just like a man."

Kid fairly snarled it at him, she was running hotter than hell.

Asking for it? She's begging for it. You know what you gotta do, cowboy.

Think with the big head, Logan. She's gotta save it for the fight.

"Kid, you're workin' on this one. You keep this shit up, and the only thing you're gonna be fightin' is the urge to scream my name."

At that point, the Harlequin levelled the absolutely most devastating look of heavy molten naked lust at Logan that he had ever seen on a woman's face.

If he had been a cartoon character, smoke would have come out of his ears. It was fire down below and without him willing it he could feel his claws singing out of his hands.

Detroit had built that Buick Wildcat to do two things. Take a beating and go like hell. And God, or more likely, the Devil himself, had built the wildcat in front of him to do two things.

Kill and fuck.

He was glad he was wanted on the latter and not the former.

You just hit the jackpot, bub. You are lookin' at the li'le red-headed devil who can make you forget all about Jean for a good, long time.

"Woops! Sorry about the claws, kid. Sometimes they gotta mind of their own."

People either looked at the claws with fear, or they pretended they weren't there, but Liv seemed oddly fascinated.

"Holy shit, is that how they work? They come outa there? No, don't put em back, yet. Lemme see. Can I see?"

"You've seen my claws, before."

"Yeah, but I never gotta chance to really look at 'em. I'll be careful."

"Alright."

Liv reached over, and ran her hand up and down the smooth sides of one of Logan's claws.

He didn't know what to think.

"I'll betcha you killed more fuckers than cancer with these things, huh, Logan. And they come out of here…like this. That makes sense. Jesus, they sure are beautiful, though! Lemme see the other hand. That's amazing! They're perfectly symmetrical. Just like fingers. Of course they are. Everything in nature, even the stars, have a certain symmetry. Jesus, it must be some kinda thrill, being at the vanguard of evolution. What a piece of work is man. The paragon of animals."

Logan had plenty of scientists look at him like he was a specimen, and plenty of women look at him like he was a prize bull, but he never had a woman scientist look at him as if his mutation was something that was symmetrical or beautiful, that reminded her of the stars and Shakespeare.

He'd never thought of himself that way, as being at the vanguard of evolution, a man at the advent of a Brave New World.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to stare. It's just, as a scientist, I'm in constant awe of the universe, and the, well, yunno, the simple miracles of evolution." Liv said, as Logan retracted his claws.

"So I'm a simple miracle of evolution, huh? I don't think I was born with these, though, kid."

"Sure you were. I got a degree in this shit, I know what I'm talkin' about. Actually, you are a very complex miracle of evolution. You see, for some reason, I think it's because if the rapid advances in human technology that have made our environment a lot fuckin' scarier and more dangerous, human have to evolve to be able to withstand the environment we've created. And here you are. Now take cats. They're predatory mammals, too, and humans, we're the killer ape, or that's how the latest theory goes. Now, you see, cats, they have retractable claws. But a human hand isn't like a cat's hand. I mean, here, lemme see your hand."

Logan thought that the kid was pulling his leg, but she wasn't; he could see dust blowing off the wheels in that big jumped-up brain of hers as it whirred back to life.

And besides, what she was saying made sense in a way he never thought of before.

He held out his hand, and she took it.

"Jesus, you got big hands! But you'd have to, wouldn't you? Anyway, see, now if you look at your palm, and you think of a cat's paw pads, it's kind of the same. The same sort of principle. But cats, they walk on all their limbs, and humans, we don't walk on our hands, we use them for just about everything, so dewclaws wouldn't work. You couldn't put them in the palms, and our fingers are too long and we use them too much. And if our fingernails were claws, that wouldn't work too well, either. You still wouldn't be able to use your hand and then the claw wouldn't retract. But right here, between our fingers, these three, not the ones on the end... See, right here, between your fingers? This bit right here, it's not doing anything. It's not like the webbing on a duck's foot, it's just this connective tissue. A good place for something like a dewclaw. This is where the room for improvement is. But for dewclaws to work on a human, they'd have to be long. Longer than your fingers, so that you could still use your hands, and your finger while you were using your claws, and so the goddamn claws wouldn't cut your fingers off. That's' why they come out of here, and here, and here, and that's' why they stick out so far. Now a guy in a lab, especially in a military lab, he'd never think of that. He's put the claws in your fingertips, or he'd make them too short, he'd fuck it up. You follow?"

What the kid was saying made sense, now that he thought about it. Perfect sense, And if there was one thing he knew about the military it was that FUBAR was standard operating procedure, especially military intelligence.

They wouldn't be able to think up something like his claws in a million years.

"Yeah. Keep talkin'."

"The army would never hire an evolutionary biologist to do research, and if they implanted them, there would have to be some mechanism. And some way to activate it. Machines don't work on their own. People have to operate machines. You're not a switchblade, are you? There's no button you push or switch you flick. There would have to be one for each claw. Where the fuck would that go on your hand? Or your arm? That's not how it works. When a cat wants his claws to come out, out they come. So do yours. And, furthermore, there's no machine or bar or housing implanted under the skin for the claws to go in and out of. You'd be able to see it and feel it, but I can't. Your hand feels just like a normal human hand. Except right here. Where your veins are, right between them, mind you, so that they don't get sliced, I can feel what seems to be three more bones. They can't do surgery like that. They would have sliced your veins all to pieces and had the claws ripping them open every time they came out. And finally two more things tell me that you were born with those claws. They come out when you want them to, but just now, when I got you turned on, they just slipped out. Like when you pet a cat and he purrs and he stretches and all his dewclaws flex and retract. Simple?"

That big brain, it was firing on all cylinders, now.

"The claws even explain your other mutations. Even your physical characteristics. The healing ability, you got that so that every time the claws came out you wouldn't bleed to death. Now, since nature selected you to have a long life, it had to make you pretty fucking weatherproof. It made you low to the ground, and square, and stocky and gave you a lot of mass, so that your legs and your arms wouldn't wear out over the years, so that you'd have a low center of gravity, more stability, all your body organs in a comeback space under dense muscles like rocks. And since you're so solid, and you have a lot of mass without being stretched out over a lot of space, it makes regeneration easier. Makes you more efficient. You can take in less food and use more energy. Don't you see, Logan? You're perfect for what it was you evolved to be. The universe knows what the fuck's it's doing. It took billions of years for you to evolve to an absolute degree of perfection to be this brand new kind of human being. No lab could have done that. There's bone under the metal, just like in the rest of your body. You see, you're a prototype. A prototype for a human that's smarter, and stronger and has natural defences. A human being who's ready for the piece of shit world that we've created for ourselves. It even explains why you're so goddamn horny. You gotta go out there and make a whole lotta little Logans for Mom Nature, so that the mutation can continue. And the thing about mutations, the successful ones, they become the norm. That's how evolution works. In as little as a thousand years, which is like a blink in terms of geological time and the evolutionary process, there'll be people just like you all over the world. And, unless some predator evolves that can wipe you out, you might not have worn out by then. If an ordinary human in pretty good shape can make it to a hundred or a hundred and ten, there's no reason why somebody like you wouldn't make it to a thousand. Jesus, that's amazing I wish I could get there with you. Then again, if my space-time research goes the way I want it to, I can be."

Logan looked at Liv like he'd never seen her before.

The kid was incandescently fucking brilliant.

No wonder she was so unstable.

He thought about everything that she said, and it all made sense.

"Liv, do you know what you just did? You just figured me out. You looked at the way the claws came out of my hands, and at my wrist and my fuckin' arm, and you told me where I came from, where I am, how I got here from there, and where I'm going. In less than ten minutes. Jesus!"

"I'm a scientist. A physicist and a biologist, to be exact. That's what I do. I look at the way things work, and then I apply what I know to what I see, and I make deductions about why things work that way based on the other things that I already know about. It's simple. I woulda thought you had figured that out a long time ago." Liv said.

"I probably did. But they wiped my memory so many times, I'm lucky I remember where my dick is."

"I don't think you can wipe somebody's memory. Science doesn't know shit about the human brain, at this point. I'll bet it's all in there, somewhere. Just nobody can figure out how to make it all come out."

"I never thought of it that way, Liv. You do have some kinda fuckin' brain."

"Well, so do you, I hear. But, sometimes, it's better just to be a simple animal. Give the big brain a rest."

"Yeah, especially tonight. Look, we gotta get our heads outa the clouds, here. You gotta make us a shitload of money, tonight, or we're fucked. After that, we can play chess and read Shakespeare, and talk about the theory of relativity while we re-enact Walden. Tonight, though, you gotta hand somebody his ass. But they're gonna be waiting for you in the next town. Are you sure you can beat this guy? Because I used to do some work for this logging camp about fifty miles north, and in two weeks, I could make us enough money that with the four-fifty we've got, we'd do alright."

"Why should you bust your ass when I can make us all the dough in one night? I don't care if he's Paul Bunyan, I'll rip his fuckin' arms off and stuff 'em up his ass! Not just anybody can kick my ass. I learned how to do what I do from Batman and the Joker, and I lived in East New York for years. Somebody like you could kick my ass, but I'd still give ya a run for your money. That's about it. This two-bit, low-rent, in-bred redneck motherfucker is mine, whoever the fuck he is." Liv said, confidently.

Logan realised that shouldn't have gotten him hard, again, but, his father always used to say, like goes with like, and that SOB Old Black Tom was one to know.

Wolverine didn't say anything, but he could scarcely believe it.

The motherfucker was seven feet tall, he had to be seven feet tall, he was goddamn Paul Bunyan.

He thought about the money he bet on Liv. Four hundred and fifty dollars. Everything that both of them had. If she won, they stood to walk out of the place with about two grand.

If she lost, there was logging, or they could just do it the easy way. He could let the claws out and get their four hundred and fifty back, on the grounds that it wasn't even close to a fair fight.

What a piece of work am I, the paragon of animals.

That was when Logan stopped thinking about the money, and started thinking more about what this big motherfucker was going to do to Liv. Sure, he was only about an inch taller than her and he could hold his own, alright, but he was a man, and a mutant, a well-honed killing machine as crafted by nature.

Liv, she was as mean as a goddamn, well, a goddamn little wolverine who came home to a burrow full of snake piss, but there was only so much she could do, right?

He figured, fuck the money, if I have to get in the ring and get her out of here, alive, I'll do it. She's a good kid, a smart kid, and when she looks at me she doesn't see a runt and a freak, she sees a higher form of human being. The goddamn world probably needs a brain likes hers to figure shit out so that people can live long enough for me to die of old age.

The big SOB stripped down to his shorts.

He looked real cocky, the motherfucker, and the big bastard had muscles on his muscles.

Logan was about done, he was getting ready to jack the bartender up against the wall, get their money, grab the kid and get the fuck out, but then, he heard it the way everybody in the bar heard it.

The first time the sound got all the men in the back room's attention, the second time it made all the tough loggers and truckers and rednecks go quiet as church mice.

It was a funny sort of sound, something somewhere between a snarl and a scream and a noise like some big predator would make, a wildcat, or a wolf.

_Hhhnnnnnngarrrrrggh! Hnnnnnngaaarghhhhhh!___

Logan realised that was Liv, out there, getting herself ready for the fight.

He changed his tune.

"Hey, bub! Yeah, you in the dirty shorts, Mr. Universe! If you know what's good for you, you'd better get the fuck outa here." He suggested.

"Fuck you, shorty! You're a little runt, and so is that crazy little Mick girlfriend of yours. After I get done wiping the floor with her, I'll start on you. Then maybe I'll show her what a real man is good for and you can watch me."

Normally, a man making threats of that kind to Logan about a woman he was with would cause that unfortunate man to get to see what his guts looked like as they came shooting out of his belly until he died, but Wolverine only smiled and lifted his glass.

Let the kid take his ass down a peg or two.

"It's your funeral, Paul Bunyan. Hey kid, Mr. Big Man is gonna beat me up and give it to you whether you like it or not. C'mon in, an' show him just what you got to give him, whether he likes it, or not."

Logan said this, knowing that not even a year ago, Liv had foiled an attempt on her virtue by a serial rapist and sex murderer by physically annihilating him with her bare hands.

His cause of death, however, was discovered at the autopsy when the coroner discovered the guy's cock and his balls rammed down his throat.

He'd choked to death on them.

Liv let out one more scream of inarticulate fury before she burst into the room in her military issue OD underwear, roaring and snarling and gnashing her teeth. The kid was really on a roll, flexing her arms and roaring and hopping around like an angry gorilla. She was having a hell of a good time, letting that inner Joker come bursting out of the deck to roll around on the grass and raise some Hell.

Logan had to admit, sometimes it just felt goddamn good to be the beast.

"Rip his fuckin' arms off and stuff 'em up his ass!" he yelled in encouragement.

She tore into Paul Bunyan like she was a wolf and he was a deer. It took her all of three or four minutes to bring him to the canvas, and she was showing no signs of stopping.

Made the beating she'd given Big Tim look like a kiss from mother.

"Help me! Get her off me!" Paul Bunyan screamed.

"Gee, I don't know, bub. I really didn't like all that shit about you beating me up and fucking the kid whether she liked it or not. I think she should just kill you."

"I didn't mean it! Lady, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You win! Just quit hittin' me! She won't quit hittin' me! Help me, buddy, please!"

Logan puffed on his cigar, thoughtfully.

"Say uncle."

"What? Fuck no! I never said "Uncle" in my life!"

"I hope it was a good one. Because it's not gonna end well."

"Okay! Uncle! Uncle UNCLE!" Paul Bunyan screamed.

Liv quit hitting him.

"Uncle?" she asked.

"UNCLE! UNCLE! UNCLE!"

"Pussy. Big fuckin' pussy." Liv sneered.

She jumped up on top of Paul Bunyan, she actually stood on him, and roared in triumph, beating her chest and ripping her tank top in two like King Kong.

That left her naked except for the boxers and her tattoos, but almost everybody in the place were too scared to look at her tits.

Not Logan.

He was fucking well looking.

Then she got down, and walked towards the bar.

Logan took off his undershirt and gave it to her.

"Hurry up and put this on, darlin', or I'm gonna hafta kill every man in this place?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Thanks, Logan."

After that performance, you would think that the owner would want to pay her and get her the fuck out of his place, but he gave them trouble.

"Bub, are you out of your fuckin' mind? Where the fuck are you from? Don't you know that around these parts, there's only one penalty for welching on a bet, and it ain't thirty days in the hole. You wanna kill him, kiddo? You did the work."

"No, no, I don't want any trouble. Let's just go out to the car."

Logan couldn't believe it.

She was going out to the car.

"We're not done yet." He told the bartender and followed her.

She got in the car, and he got in with her

"Are you out of your fuckin' mind? What about our money?"

"Relax, man. I'm gonna go get our fuckin' money. But I don't like that prick who's in charge, or his place. He tried to throw in a ringer when he set me up to fight some asshole, and they don't want to pay us and anybody else who bet on me what they owe us. We're superheroes, man. We gotta teach people like that a lesson about what's right and wrong. Time for us do our jobs. Reach back behind your seat and pass me that old-fashioned instrument for enforcing justice on shitheels."

The kid had a goddamn Tommy Gun.

"Putcher safety belt on and hold onto your ass. We're gonna make this an open-air joint."

"I like the way you think, Liv."

"Thanks."

She backed up a little, blew the horn a few times to let them know she was coming, and drove the Wildcat through the wall and into the bar.

Then she jumped out, with the chopper at the ready.

"Alright, ya motherfuckers! Drop your cocks and grab your socks, it's party-time! Hahahahahahahaha! A-ahahahahahahahahaha!"

Everybody hit the dirt, and laughing like Charlie Manson at the St. Valentine's Day massacre, Liv ventilated the bar.

When she was sure she had made her point she walked over to the bar, climbed up on the stool and hauled the terrified owner and bartender over the bar.

Logan rolled down his window.

"Bet you wished you just gave us the money and let us go quietly, huh, bub?" he asked.

Liv grabbed the bartender by his neck and his nuts, held him over hear head and shook him a little, then slammed him to the ground.

She put her foot on his neck.

"Okay, who bet on me to win?"

Quite a few guys, some of them from the previous night came out from under some tables.

"Thanks for your support, fellas. Okay, shitheel. Time for you to get your ass up, and pay these nice men. Then you can pay me, and my friend. If you don't, I'm gonna ask everybody to leave, real nice and I'm gonna shoot this dump up until the walls cave in. And, as for you, shitheel, hey, Logan, come on out and show this motherfucker what you're going to do to him if he continues to act like a cunt."

Wolverine got out of the car and unsheathed his claws.

_Snikt!_

"I don't think he's acting, darlin'." Logan observed.

"I thought that was him." One of the guys said.

"Yeah, me too." Said another.

"Makes sense he'd be travelling with a chick like that." Said a third.

Logan crouched down beside the bar owner, and held his claws against the man's neck.

"Well?"

"Okay! Okay! I'll pay everybody! Everybody!"

Even the guys who lost started to cheer.

***

Liv stopped at the next bar they passed and came out with a case of Guinness and a gallon of Yukon Jack. As they were doing 80 down the windy backroads and Liv puffed on a filterless Lucky while slugging down Yukon Jack like it was Coca-Cola, Logan remembered that this kid was one hundred per-cent mortal, and realised that she was crazy, one-hundred percent batshit fucking nuts.

He smiled at her.

Definitely his kind of girl.

"How about that shit, huh? Was that some kind of shit, or what?" Liv enthused.

"How much did we make?"

"Fifteen hundred. Fifteen hundred bucks! We got almost two thousand fucking dollars! I thought maybe we'd make another five hundred, holy fucking shit! Shit I'm gonna buy some grass! I haven't smoked grass since 1968, but fuck it. I'm on vacation. I'm gonna buy me some grass and smoke it and I'm gonna get drunk and high off my ass and stay that way for a week. We're got it made in the fuckin' shade, my man! Everything's groovy. Gimme another beer, I ain't half as drunk as I wanna be. It's smooth sailing from here on out. You and me we're gonna have ourselves a real good time. People are gonna fuckin' remember the shit we are gonna do between here and New York State."

Logan cracked himself another beer.

She was still crazy, crazy as Eddie was.

Good old Eddie.

He and Eddie had served together in Europe and then in the Pacific under Steve Rogers. If there was anybody you wanted to have driving a tank on a suicide mission where death was certain, it was Eddie Blake.

He'd drive you right the hell out of it, laughing, over the bones of the surprised enemy.

The thing about Eddie was, it wasn't that bullets didn't affect him because he had special powers like the men served with did, bullets didn't affect him because it really fucking pissed him off when somebody fired them into his thick hide.

And Eddie, he was still fucking nuts, and still going strong.

Right now he was over in 'Nam with the Doc, killing everything that walked, crawled, or flew in the name of the good old US of A.

His men loved him.

He kept them alive and made the enemy extremely dead.

Still a helluva soldier, too, as Logan knew firsthand from doing a 14 month tour with his old friend that had ended only recently.

Just in time for him to meet Yukon Mel Reinhardt.

But, things could be worse.

He could be Eddie, with Napalm as his apprentice.

Thinking about it made him laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothin'. I like your plan. It beats walking." He replied.

They drove for about an hour, and then, on a lonely stretch of road heavily wooded on both sides, Liv found a trail big enough for the Wildcat to navigate and slowly made her way through the brush to a clearing not unlike the one she had been camped in before.

She killed the headlights, and there they were, alone in the dark, with nothing but the moon to see them.

Liv turned on that look again, the one she'd given him earlier that day, and sealed it with a smile that was completely unlike the one she gave a man when she was about to hand him his ass.

He had known, since they met, that someday, he was going to get that smile.

Logan knew what he was about to do, and he felt bad about it, but what was he supposed to do.

He was just a man, wasn't he?

"Get in the back." She said.

Wolverine smiled back at her, or rather, he leered.

"I don't know about that, darlin'. If you're as hot as I think you are, I hope you got a sleeping bag, because it's gonna be hell on your yellow leather upholstery. Sometimes the claws just come out."

"You must be hell on sheets." Liv quipped.

"Oh, I'm hell on just about anything." Logan snarled.

He was just this side of deranged, he could taste how good she smelled and he felt horny as a junkyard dog during a full moon.

They got out of the car in a hurry.

She didn't have a sleeping bag, but she had a blanket that she spread on the ground, and she dropped her clothes off like they never belonged on her body to begin with.

It was a beautiful summer night.

The kind that poets write about.

The grass was green, the trees were green, the moon was full. And even though the Harlequin looked good in a bra and shorts with two guns in holsters in the bra and a chopper in her hands, she looked even better naked in the moonlight.

She looked up at the moon, and laughed, and howled at it, and Logan got the idea that she always howled at the full moon. She kept laughing and she laid down on the blanket and all her red hair fell over her and the blanket and some trailed behind her onto the grass.

She sat up on her elbows and moved her hair around, hauled up her knees and set them wide apart.

Her green eyes looked yellow and feral again, but violence was the furthest thing from her mind.

Logan couldn't help it, he felt the claws singing out of his hands and raked them across the ground, willing them to retract before he put his arms around the most brutal and violent avenger to come out of New York City since the Comedian's debut in 1938.

Funny how she didn't seem too deadly to him, just then.

Not the way she giggled and sighed and had her hard little hands all over him.

"Big for a short guy, ain't you? That's good. Real good. What a piece of work you are. The paragon of animals." She sighed, absently, laughing a little

She was crazy and drunk and naked and she already had one leg around him. Crazy and naked and horny and drunk and as bad and mean and no good a woman as there ever was; she was the kind of girl that a man usually wouldn't kiss on her dirty little mouth, but Logan kissed her just the same, falling into her hair that was all around them.

Kiss her all over until I get the taste of her in my mouth as heavy as her scent in the air.

He found out she tasted as good as she smelled, like a fine wine, and he felt drunk.

And that was fine.


	2. Lost and Found REVISED & UPDATED

**Chapter 2: Lost and Found**

Meanwhile, back in New York…

**Xavier Institute, Westchester, New York, Summer, 1970**

A leopard does not change his spots.

But a leopard is and animal, and James "Logan" Howlett, was not an animal, he was a man, and an X-Man.

Those who told Charles Xavier that he was making a terrible mistake, that Wolverine was little more than an animal, that he could never become a member of a team, teach at a school, live in one place, that he would be gone in a month, they had all been wrong.

Wrong for a little over half of a decade.

Wrong today.

As Professor X saw him, Logan was a noble man, with a highly-developed sense of honour. It was well beneath his code of personal ethics to even attempt to steal a woman from a colleague, especially when that woman was also a colleague.

Even if he was in love with Jean Grey, hopelessly and desperately so.

Even if she had some feelings for him, as well.

A lesser man would have taken advantage of that, grabbed what he could get when he could get it and clung, greedily to that stolen memory, but Logan was not a lesser man.

Still, nothing tears a man down, even an indestructible man , the way unrequited love does.

And when he is in a moment of weakness, even a strong man can be vulnerable, especially to a woman, a young, beautiful woman, who promises him that she can take all his pain away.

Especially when she can.

It was an old story, older than Logan, one of the oldest stories of all time, and probably happening all over the world.

Classes were no longer in session, the young woman in question whom he had gone with was of age, Cyclops swore that he had lent Logan his shiny new red truck (?) and so Charles looked upon Wolverine's abrupt departure as a vacation, not a disgrace.

Then, about a week later a package arrived for him at the school.

A knapsack containing some of his clothes and things, and his wallet were in the package, along with a note in the absent student's handwriting that simply said "Logan, thanks for everything, but it's better this way. I didn't mean to take your stuff, so I sent it back to you. Good bye and good luck, Mel."

The sender clearly thought that Logan had returned home, but he hadn't.

In the light of these events, Cyclops reported his vehicle stolen, and Wolverine was officially missing.

Weeks passed by with no news.

Cerebro told Charles Xavier that Logan was in Canada and that he was still alive, and while those were comforting certainties, they raised uncomfortable questions.

Why hadn't Logan contacted him? Was he in some kind of trouble? Had he been harmed in any way by the prolonged exposure to the young woman's powers?

Was he coming back?

Should I wait, or should I send his fellow X-Men after him?

A development came in the form of a telephone call from US customs agents at the Canadian border, followed a few hours later by a disconcerting special delivery.  
"Yukon Mel" Reinhardt, of Howlett, British Columbia, most recently from San Francisco, and a student about to enter her sophomore year at the Institute, found herself in Professor Charles Xavier's office, after she attempted to cross the border into the US from Niagara Falls in a battered late model red Chevrolet pickup truck, with a large amount of booze and a small amount of pot.

She had recently been badly beaten, claimed to know nothing about the drugs or the liquor, and told authorities that she just wanted to go home to the X-Mansion in New York, to return the vehicle and resume her studies.

After Canadian authorities discovered that the truck was registered to Scott Summers, of New York State, and Yukon Mel reported that she was "with" the X-Men, they returned the young mutant, the truck, and the wallet and duffel bag to Professor Charles Xavier, leaving the mess completely to him to sort out.

And quite a mess it was.

Yukon Mel was an unusual student. She was twenty or 21, and in her sophomore year because she had spent her teenage years on the highways and bi-ways of the West Coast of North America, sometimes a hippie gypsy, sometimes a mountain man in the snow, but most often only one of two full female members of the San Francisco chapter of the Hell's Angels.

From her deceased mutant father, she inherited extraordinary strength, from her father's mother and grandmother and so on into time immemorial, blond, blue-eyed Yukon Mel, who really did look like the girl on the bottle of Logan's favorite German beer, was a Nymph.

When she came to the Mansion for help, it was because she had gotten to the point where if she came within six feet of a man, any man, he would become so hopelessly devoted to her that after they passed in a crowd, by the time she was gone, he would be lost to lovelorn madness and suicidal hopelesness.

Charles had helped her gain a great deal of control over her powers so that she could associate normally with men, in social situations, but when she and Wolverine, who had grown out of the same snowy mountains met up, they had become fast friends, and wanted to get a little more than social.

"Melanie, I do remember telling you that you did not have adequate control over your powers to...embark on an affair with Logan. Yet."

"I know, Professor. I know. But Logan told me I couldn't hurt him, and after two years of total celibacy, six months of which I spent in close quarters with him, I was willing to take Logan's word over yours. And now I've fucked everything up. He got hooked on me, and, Professor, I got hooked on him. We were both totally out of control. Drinking too much. Drinkin' too much then tearin around on our bikes. Crazy shit. I admit it. I mean, we did it all over the school. Even outside. It's a miracle we never got caught. But, yunno, I think we really needed each other. Still it got to this point where if I would have asked Logan to go to Rio and get me a coconut, he would have done it, and if he asked me to ski down Mount Everest naked with a carnation up my nose, I would have gone right to the flower shop and then to the airport. And this one night, we went for a ride in Mr. Summers truck. We were drunk. Really drunk. And I had some pot and I don't think Logan smokes a lot of pot because he got, like, really high. And we were in the truck, drinking and passing this joint back and forth and laughing like idiots and playing the radio really loud and he ended up driving us all the way to Toronto. We got this hotel room, and I started telling Logan about my grandmother in Vancouver, and how she was the only one in my family I was in touch with and that I hadn't seen her for seven years, and before I knew it, we were on the way to Vancouver."

"I see. So how did you become parted?"

"I realised that things were getting out of hand. He started getting crazy on me. Violent. I went to go get us some smokes, and he jumps outa bed, sticks his claws in my face and tells me that if I try and ditch him, he's gonna find me, and cut me up, so nobody will want me but him. And that ain't like Logan. This thing with Ms. Grey, it was driving him crazy, and what I was doing wasn't helping. It was like drugs.I hate to be crude, but I realised I was fucking the man's brains out. I sorta gave up, ant that point, I figured, fuck it, I'll drive the rest of the way home, build myself a shack in the mountains around Howlett and stay away from peopole, where I couldn't hurt anybody, anymore. So I left Logan to go cold turkey on me, I took the truck and I paid the hotel bill and I split. I had no intention to ever come back here. As for Logan, I really thought that he would just call here in the morning and get the jet to come get him. I was about a hundred miles away before I realised I still had all his stuff, but like I said, I figured he would be back here, so I sent his stuff along."

"And how did you come to be back here, Mel?"

"Me? I got into trouble on my way home. Drinkin'. Ran into this one guy, he tried to steal Mr. Summers truck and he wrecked it and he beat me up, but you should see what was left of him. I figured I couldn't outrun my problems, and I didn't wnat to just ditch Logan like that. He's, yunno, my old man. And now he's lost out there, somewhere. Jesus, Professor, what if I killed him? What if he woke up the next day and I wasn't there and he went off and killed himself?"

"I'm sure that didn't happen, Miss Reinhardt. For one thing, that would be almost impossible for him to do. For another, Logan lived alone in the wilderness where you left him for many years, before you or I were even born. I'm sure he's just been taking some time off, to compose himself before the school year starts. Now, I will let you stay on as a student. But I'm putting you on probation for eight weeks. You'll be confined to your quarters except during classes, you will eat lunch here in this office and you will study in your room. And you'll have to make restitution to Mr. Summers for the damage to his truck. I'm afraid I can't let you take an off-campus job, just yet, but I have arranged for you to do some work at the library. That should take up a good deal of your free time to get into trouble. As for your relationship with Wolverine, you're both adults and I can't tell you what to do. But I would suggest if you want to continue that you control your powers in his presence to some extent, and that both of you should do less drinking, and be a lot more discreet. But, if you have any further instances of extreme misconduct, I will have to dismiss you? Are we agreed?"

"Yes, Professor. We're agreed. Thanks for giving me another chance."

"Fine, then. You are dismissed, and you may return to your room. After I escort you to the Infirmary. Welcome home, Melanie. I'm glad that you've come back to us."  
Professor X wasn't lying, he was glad to see Melanie Reinhardt had returned; she was quite alone in the world without the Institute, but he, himself remained worried as he left her in the capable paws of Dr. McCoy

Where was Logan?

And , would he ever return?

_(Author's Note: For those of you who want to know more about Mel, read onto "Soap Gets In Your Claws" It's all there, and I didn't want to waste people's time and print the same thing twice)_

Professor X wasn't lying, he was glad to see Melanie Reinhardt, had returned; she was quite alone in the world without the Institute, but he, himself remained worried as he left her in the capable paws of Dr. McCoy.

Where was Logan?

And, would he ever return?

**The Batcave, Wayne Manor, Long Island, New York, Summer 1970**

Had the supervillains, the press, or even the general citizenry of New York City known that Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Captain America and Dr. Manhattan were all meeting in the same place at the same time, they would have been quite curious as to know what world-shattering event such a formidable cabal were planning to thwart.

They would have been disappointed, as the only world that would have been shattered by the event was a private one.

"I'm glad that you all came here tonight for this meeting. I almost wish I was here to tell you that some diabolical supervillain had a plot to destroy New York, because I would know what we should do about that. But the problem I have tonight is more personal. I'm not going to bother to couch it in formaility. My stepdaughter is missing. In the months since she obliterated the Brookyln Slasher, she's had a complete mental breakdown, and I haven't heard from her since she took all the money out of her checking account and drove out of town. She left me a note saying she was going to Toronto to get her head together. I've been doing some investigating on my own, which let me to a few pieces of shattered glass imbedded in the concrete and a fading brown bloodstain and some tire tracks along a deserted road just outside of Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. The tire tracks came from Liv's car, and the blood was hers. I don't know where she is, I don't even know if she's alive or dead."

Bruce Wayne's voice cracked a little, and he stopped speaking.

"I'll fly to Canada, immediately, Bruce, and start looking for her." Clark volunteered.

"She's not dead, Bruce. I have memories of Liv that I know haven't happened, yet. She hasn't got the transmitter I gave her, but I can try to find her and transport her back to you." Jon added

"You know, Wolverine's gone AWOL around that area, too. They might have found each other. If she's with Logan, she's safe. I'll talk to Nick. I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D would be interested in finding those two." Steve decided

"If you pass me that phone, Bruce, I'll bet I can make three calls and find the Harlequin." Tony boasted.

Then, as if it had been summoned, the phone rang.

"Sorry to interrupt your meeting, Mr. Wayne, but you have been waiting for this call." Alfred's voice said, over the intercom.

Batman picked up the phone.

"Batman, here." He said.

**British Columbia, Canada, Summer 1970**

**I: Logan**

Wolverine woke up to find the sun high in the sky, which was funny, because he didn't remember falling asleep.

Passing out, possibly, but falling asleep, no.

Mel was a nice girl. Those powers of hers made him a lot of promises that she couldn't keep, but Logan was used to women not being able to keep up with him; he'd only met two who ever could.

Make that three.

And to keep up with this one, he was going to have to make sure he ate his Wheaties.

He felt sort of like he's been run over by a train, but in the best possible way.

He also wasn't sure where he was, other than lying naked on a blanket in the grass.

There was red hair spread all across his chest, and when he turned his head he saw a little red-haired girl lazily sprawled on the blanket beside him.

The blanket which had a lot of holes slashed in it that probably hadn't been there before.

She looked small and sweet and quirt while she was sleeping, lying there with her hair all in knots, dirt and leaves in it, a grin on her lips, dirt and leaves pasted to her skin as well.

Then, he remembered the events of the past 48 hours, clealy.

Particularly those of the past twelve.

It had taken a whole helluva lot of effort to put that fire out.

Not that he was complaining.

He found he was pasted to her as well when he tried to get up, and their bodies parted rudely with a sticky sound.

Logan staggered a little as he lumbered off into the brush to take a piss, brushing some of the dirt and leaves off of himself.

His back hurt, his mouth was dry, he smelled like he'd spent the night in a dormitory for nymphomaniacs, he was incredibly thirsty and he felt like his legs were made of Jell-O.

Other than that, he felt pretty goddamn good.

That said, he'd be surprised if the kid could actually get up and walk.

_Nailed her like a railroad tie._

_And then I got hit by the train._

But she was a fine, strong girl, and they were in no hurry.

After he had something to drink, he thought maybe he might lay a little dawn surprise on her.

There was beer in the car, yet, and he had one, but he wanted water, so, yawning, he made his way up to the road, intending to cross to the other side and look for a spring.

As he emerged naked from the brush, whistling merrily in the novel feeling of complete satisafction, and stiff enough to run a flag up the flagpole, with a can of beer in his hand, he happened upon a patrol car and two Mounties.

There wasn't much a man could say in a situation like this.

"Good morning, officers. Lovely day, isn't it?" he said, pleasantly.

Wolverine set his beer carefully down, and stood back up, covering his assets with his hands.

"You seem to be enjoying it well enough, son. Now, as it's very early and you don't look quite awake, I'm going to go ahead and assume you have some clothes down there in the woods to go with those dog tags." The older Mountie said.

You could tell he was trying very hard not to laugh.

"I do, officer. I woulda put 'em on, but I was lookin' for a place to wash up, first. I got kinda dirty last night."

The older Mountie cracked a smile.

"Son, you look like you spent the night wrestling with a wildcat."

"I sure as hell did, officer." Logan replied.

He was off the hook with the white-haired man, he could tell, but he younger Mountie, he was more of your "Just the facts ma'am," type.

"Sir, there's been a report from a passing motorist in this area that someone was murdering a woman right over this hill in those woods. The man making the report said he drove past here around two on the morning and as he stopped for a deer to cross the road, he said he heard a woman's voice, screaming and a man's voice hollering or bellowing and he could hear a lot of cursing and thrashing around, too. Would you happen to know anything about that, sir?" asked the younger Mountie.

A real by-the-book guy.

"I know all about it, bub. You see, I'm from right around here, up closer to the Yukon, myself, but I live in the States now, and I came up here with a girl. To get away from another girl that was in love with a guy a work with and not me. In the guy's truck. Well, the girl I brought with me took the car and everything I had but the clothes on my back. I've been on foot for about a month, now, and I got picked up by another girl, this crazy little girl from Brooklyn, New York. Well, the way she was dressed, and she seemed like a real hard case, I had her figured for a dyke, but, boy, was I wrong. I'm tryna get some sleep in the back of the car, and she calls me outside, an' all she's wearing is nine or ten tattoos an' a smile, and she tells me it's time for me to start payin' my way. When she picked me up she said something about a ride back to the States, but what she didn't say that she was going to ride me all the way to New York! Holy shit! I'm just trying to catch my breath and get a little peace and quiet before she wakes up again. Officer, I feel like I'm a hundred years old this morning. But, if I wanna ride home, well, like I keep telling myself, you know what you gotta do, cowboy. Not that I'm complainin', though. I'm even gettin' free beer. Girl drinks like a fish."

The older Mountie laughed and the young guy almost cracked a smile.

"Son, maybe you ought to stay away from women for awhile."

Logan looked down towards that which he was covering with his hands.

"I hear you. But he's hasn't got any ears. And he does the thinking. Me, I just follow him wherever he tells me to go." He replied, trying to sound as much like a dumb ox who got led into trouble by his cock as much as he could.

Well, considering his track record, lately…

The older Mountie was ready to let him go, but Joe Friday, whose dick was probably about the size of a cocktail wiener, was still playing it by the book.

"Do you think you could produce the young lady, sir?"

"Certainly, officer. Liv! Liv! Wake up, darlin'! You wanna get dressed and bring me my pants and come up here? There's some Mounties who want to see you're still alive."

It's not easy to make small talk with the authorities when they've quite literally caught you with your pants down, but Logan made do until Liv's arrival.

The Harlequin came up the hill, and Wolverine put his jeans on.

"See. There she is. Alive and kicking."

All of the sudden, Liv Napier the cocky bar-room roughneck disappeared, and Trivelino J. Napier, the cool, college-educated professional made an appearance.

She was dressed and had combed most of the leaves out of her hair, and was carrying a nylon bag with a zipper on it in her hands, which she opened in a crisp and professional manner.

"Good morning, officers. Sorry to trouble you, this morning. My friend here had his wallet stolen, so he doesn't have any ID, but I've brought all of mine. Here's my birth certificate. That's my New York driver's licence. And my registration for my car. And that's my NYU Student ID. And here's my NYU Teacher's ID. And this one is my ID card for Dr. Manhattan's laboratory. I'm working with him on my M.S. in quantum physics. I have a B.S. in evolutionary biology, history and quantum physics. I'm here on my summer vacation, doctor's orders. I almost had a breakdown from overwork, so I decided to see the Great White North. You have such a lovely country…"

The Mounties looked impressed with her credentials.

Liv shot a look at Logan's credentials.

"…such beautiful wildlife. Amazing specimens." She enthused.

"Well, the only thing is, Miss Napier, this area isn't a public campsite. Now if you and Mr…"

"Logan."

"…Mr. Logan from up near the Yukon, here, if you want to do some camping, I've got a map here of all the campsites between here and Toronto. Here you go, son. Now if you go down the road into the next town, there's a good supply store there, get everything you need. From now on, though, you'd better camp at a campsite. And get yourselves a tent. With a good, strong zipper, eh?"

"Yes officer." Liv said

"Alright, then. You two have a nice day. Enjoy your vacation. And good luck to you, Mr. Logan. Come on, Jennings. Let's leave these folks alone and go find some bad guys to arrest."

After the Mounties left, Wolverine and the Harlequin made their way back down to the car to break camp.

"What the fuck was that all about?" she asked.

Back to her usual self.

"Somebody called the cops on us. They thought there was a man killing a woman in the woods. You're pretty damn loud. Howlin' like a goddamn mad dog."

"It was a near miss, chief. That last time I popped your hood, not only didja go off like a fountain an' nearly drown me, it was a good thing you got your hands off my head when you did. I heard those claws come out and tear up the ground pretty good. An' I'm loud? That roar you let out, holy shit!"

"Darlin', I didn't think a woman could do something like that to a man. Not unless it was in a movie. Especially not a man my size. I couldn't help myself. How the hell did you do that?"

Liv laughed.

"You know how a snake swallows animals whole? It's kinda like that."

"That's disgusting, kid."

"You didn't seem to think so at the time. It was somethin' ta see! You went off like a Roman candle. All your muscles flexin', roarin' like a wild animal, all your claws out. Ah, yes, moonlight and adamantium. Such is the stuff that dreams are made of." She said, almost sounding dreamy.

"You find poetry in some strange places, Liv."

"Well, when ya live in the sewer, the gutter looks like a trough."

"I never heard that one before."

"It's true. There's very little absolute truth in the universe. And there's very little real beauty. I mean, you said yourself that you were a mountain man. So you know nature is beautiful. And it's the source of the only absolute truths that exist. But it can be arbitrary and cruel. Maybe not today, where the sun shines and the grass is green, but if some God-awful hellacious storm blows up out of a lovely day like this, you 'n me will be huddled in that car like a coupla wild animals in a cave, hopin' it blows over rather than blows us away. But that don't make nature any less perfect. Or any less beautiful. And every creature that walks, crawls or flies feels lust and rage, to some degree. Lust is truth. Rage is truth. And in truth there is beauty. It might be a strange kinda beauty, but at least it's real. And when ya live in the sewer, the gutter looks like a trough. Yunno what I mean?" She replied.

"Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. You just better make sure you don't get the two confused. Lust and rage. You've got a little too much, kid, a little too much of both. Speakin' of which, then what happened to me?"

"You went down for the count like somebody reached into your neck and pulled out your spine. I thought there was really something wrong with you until I heard you start to snore."

They packed up the trunk and got in the car.

Liv cracked a beer and started the engine.

"C'mon, let's get to that campsite. I need a shower. I still got leaves in my hair, and dirt on my ass and I'm covered in come stains." She said.

Logan cracked a beer for himself.

He smiled.

"You're welcome, darlin'." He said.

Logan sat in the black Wildcat for awhile, after the little red wildcat went into the supply store.

He was thinking about what Charlie had told him about damsels in distress.

The Harlequin was not a damsel.

She was three damsels.

And all three of them were in serious distress.

One was a regular Mr. Spock. A cool-headed and brilliant scientist with a razor-sharp jet engine mind that took everything apart, reduced it to its component particles, and then reassembled it, painstakingly until it was understood, and catalogued. This was the part of her that looked at him as a miracle of evolutionary biology, the part that was working with a man who was, for all practical purposes, a demi-god, working on unravelling and harnessing the mysteries of space and time.

Unfortunately for her, and everyone else on the planet who may have benefited from same, the second was The Great Beast, something dark and feral and disturbed that fed and delighted on blood and sorrow and the chaos of destruction rather than that of creation.

The third was the Harlequin, a superhero trying to follow in the footsteps of her foster-father, Batman, and trying to avoid the tempting path laid out by her real father, the Joker, when, in very different ways, she loved and respected both men

And these three warring factions lived in the body of a confused, traumatised 20 year old kid called Liv Napier who liked to drink and fuck and fight and work on cars and had absolutely no idea how to resolve the war inside her head and was trying to muddle through without anybody to help her.

As a man who didn't even own the space inside his own mind, Logan knew he wasn't the one to do it.

He felt like the kid needed something, something from him, specifically, but he didn't know what it was.

What he could do was get them all back home to Wayne Manor, safe and sound, so that Bruce, who hopefully had a plan for what to do with the kid, could put it into action.

It suddenly occurred to him that the shape Liv was in, she probably hadn't thought to call home for a long time.

He got out of the car and walked over to the supply store, and dropped a whole shitload of change into the rickety old pay-phone out front.

"Wayne Manor, Alfred speaking."

"Hiya Alfred. Long time, no see. Could I talk to Bruce? I found something he's been looking for, up here in the Great White North. Tell him it's Logan."

"Do you mean our Miss Napier, sir?"

"Sure do."

The Bat was on the line in ten seconds flat.

"Batman, here."

"It's Wolverine. Is this an, uh, secure line?"

"Yes it is. And you're talking to Clark, Tony, Steve and Jon, too."

"I am? Well, I got good news. I found Liv Napier. She's alive and well, and inside the little general store I'm standing outside of, buyin' supplies. I guess we're going to Toronto, to catch up to somebody named Slim, who stole three grand from her."

"What about you, Logan? I heard you got mixed up with some woman who had mutant powers to use her, uh, feminine wiles, on your brain to get you addicted to her so strongly that men kill themselves after she leaves them." Captain America broke in.

"Yeah, Liv has that effect on guys. I've lived a hundred years and I never met a woman like her."

Tony Stark laughed.

"He's talking about the mutant girl. Your student."

"Who, Mel? Shit, Mel is a real nice girl. Do you guys know if she made it back?"

"Yes. And after you're done talking to us, you should phone home." Tony replied.

"About my stepdaughter. How bad is it? And don't bullshit me, Logan." Bruce broke in.

"You got a plan for what to do about this her, Bruce? Because I can't figure it out."

"Yes. And it's so crazy it just might work."

"Eddie?"

The name hung in the air in front of the assembled superheroes like the elephant in the living room.

So to speak.

"Eddie."

"It'll work, Bruce. The Devil made those two in Hell for each other." Logan opined.

Captain America laughed, in spite of himself.

"So, tell us, how bad is it? What was she doing?" Batman insisted.

Iron Man leaned over to speak privately to Captain America.

"The way Bruce talks you would think that the Harlequin got up out of a hospital bed and blew up a bridge and killed a busload of nuns just to get to the guy who shot her." He said.

"That almost sounds like something Liv would do." Dr. Manhattan interrupted.

"Well, I was having a beer in a dive and I put a bet on a bare knuckle prize fight in the back room. I saw this nice, pretty redheaded girl in a screaming, frothing berserk rage like a rabid dog bring down a man twice her size, and I felt sorry for the guy. I followed her outside and I fit the girl with the car and tracked her to the campsite where she was halfway to going native, and after I jump-started her great big brain with a little friendly conversation and an offer to help her out if she gave me a ride back to the States, she saw the claws come out of my hand, looked at the claws, looked at my hand, felt the bones in my hand and my wrist and my arm and explained everything about the mutation I've had for years to me in the terms of evolutionary biology in a very clear and simple fashion that has completely changed the entire way I look at my fuckin' life. Then she went and won us a G and a half bringing down this motherfucker who looked like Paul Bunyan. And I mean this big bastard is gonna wake up every morning and remember what she did to him every time he looks in the mirror. Then, when the bartender wouldn't pay she drove her car through the wall, shot his place up with a chopper and made him pay us and the other guys he cheated. After that she found someplace to buy a shitload of booze and drove halfway across BC hammering it down like a lumberjack driving in the dark at eighty miles an hour on cowpaths before she pulled over to make camp and, uh, made me feel like I was a thousand years old. Now she's in this supply store, buying a tent and sleeping bags and I'm outside, talking to you."

There was a pause on the other line as Bruce took it all in.

He pushed a button on the phone, excused himself and turned his back on the assembly to speak privately to Wolverine.

"Its' just me on the line , now. Could you do me a favor, Logan, and make sure that every morning when she cracks a beer and swallows it in one gulp that she washes down one of those little white pills? The world is not ready for an indestructible mutant with deadly claws and an IQ of two-hundred and the liver of a Norse God who's a little foggy on the difference between good and evil and calls the Joker grandpa. Especially if it's a girl."

Logan had a good laugh until he realised Bruce was completely serious.

"I'm not kidding. Tell me you saw her take the goddamn pill."

"She did today."

"Today doesn't do either of us any good."

"Bruce, you're practically her father. Do I have to say this to you?"

"You pulled out?"

"I pulled out. Every time. I'm a hundred and twenty years old. I figured this shit out awhile ago."

Batman breathed a sigh of relief.

"You must think I'm a rotten father. And a horrible man. You tell me you found my little girl, my ward. My apprentice, who I've trained to be a superhero lost in the wilderness, living on an income from bare knuckle prize fights and not only do I sound relieve that's all that's happened to her, I tell you not to knock her up and get her home so I can deliver her into the hands of the Comedian as soon as he finishes up murdering half of Vietnam."

"If you turned Liv into a hero, you gotta be the father of the year, Bruce. And you can't help the way she is. It's her nature. At least you're not tryin' to deny it and lookin' the other way. And you won't be deliverin' her. She'll be runnin'."

Meanwhile, Superman's ears were burning and his face was bright red.

He could hear every word that Bruce and Logan were saying.

He coughed, uncomfortably.

"What's wrong, Clark?"

"Nothing, Steve. I just wish I couldn't hear so well, sometimes."

The private conversation continued

"She's not an animal, Logan. I keep trying to convince her that she's not just a beast, but s easier for her to be one than it is to do anything else. Try to be kind to her. No matter what she does to you when she's drunk or off or head, or having her Troubles. She doesn't mean it. She can't help herself. She's so…lost."

Easier to be an animal than it is to be anything else.

"That's what she was tryin' to do when I found her."

"What? Be an animal?"

"Don't take it so lightly, Bruce. The kid was half-savage. I could smell the goddamn wildness in her. I mean, she sniffs the air and howls and the moon and snarls like an animal…"

"She's always done that."

"Yeah, well, she was crouching naked in the bushes. If I wasn't me, somebody she knew, and that she knew she couldn't kill, she probably would have leapt on whoever it was and tried to tear his throat out. The kid was alone in the woods for a month and she was ready to go back to the trees. What the fuck is she running from in New York?"

"Herself."

"That's bad."

"I sent her to doctors. Doctors couldn't help her. I sent her to Professor X. She wouldn't let him help. Finally she just took off for Toronto. I was beginning to think I'd never see her again."

"Maybe she's doin' what she needs to do to get better. Maybe I can help. I'll took after her, help her find this Slim asshole an' her dough, an I'll get her home to ya in one piece before classes start."

"Would you really do that, Logan?"

"I said I would. I mean, I came ta her camp. I was broke and I was starvin', and all she had was three cans of beer an' a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jelly an' she shared her food with me. An' the money she made, literally, with her sweat and blood. Wants to give me a ride back to New York. Wait a minute. Here she comes."

"I'll make the call public again. Hello? Liv?"

"…Jesus, I can't fuckin hold everything, Logan, canya get this stuff, Okay, here's the keys. Hello, Pop? Is that you?"

"Me and Superman and Iron Man and Captain America and Dr. Manhattan."

"Really? Jon, I'm sorry I've been gone from work for so long. Do I still have a job when I come back?"

"Of course you do. Who would I find to replace you?"

Tony Stark looked interested.

"Thanks, Jon. Bruce, can you go to Arkham and tell the Old Man I'm alright?"

"They paroled your father. Again."

"Oh. Well, fingers crossed. I'll hafta call him."

"What happened to you, Liv?"

"That cocksucker MacLeod shot me while I was sleepin' in my car and robbed me and left me to die in the fuckin' road! Oh, uh, sorry, Clark."

"Actually, Liv, I think that's a pretty good characterisation of a man who shoots a woman and leaves her alongside the road to die."

"Well, at least he didn't get the car. Goddamn junkie bastard was either too dumb or too scared that I wasn't quite dead to steal it. I'm goin' after him. But I'm gonna take my time. Me an' Logan, we been talking, and we both need a vacation. He's gonna show me the sights."

"I'll bet." Iron Man chuckled.

"Is it okay if I take the rest of the summer off?"

"It's okay with me if it's okay with Bruce." Superman agreed.

"Just try not to get into any of your Troubles, Liv." Batman warned

"Your work can wait until September." Dr. Manhattan agreed.

"I'm not due for the Troubles until fall. Don't worry so much. Look, I hafta go. We're outa change. Pop, I'll callya back next time I'm near a phone? Okay. Bye everybody."

Liv hung up.

"Well, that's…settled." Bruce said.

"If you can call it that." Clark agreed.

"She sounds happy. She's safe. What's the problem?" Tony asked.

"Tony, we just found out that a woman whose friends call her Napalm, who happens to be the biggest brute to hit the city since the Comedian in 1938 is on the loose in the Great White North with Wolverine. They have a car, and camping supplies, and money and guns and liquor, and they're heading to Toronto to meet up with some poor bastard who wasn't smart enough to know that if you want to kill the Harlequin, you're going to have to shoot her more than once." Captain America explained.

"Exactly what I was thinking." Superman agreed.

Iron Man shrugged.

"How bad could it get?"

Bruce Wayne smiled in spite of himself, and shook his head.

"You have no idea."

Liv went over to the car, and handed Logan a wad of money.

"Here's the cash. You go get what you need. Clothes, a knapsack, whatever. It's on me. I'll pay myself back when I get to the next town that has a bank in it."

"C'mon, Liv, let me pay my own way."

"Oh, don't worry. You will. Like you told those cops, man, I'm gonna ride you all the way back to New York."

"You're a bad girl, Liv."

"I know. I'll be in the car. Don't get anything complicated. I'm also impatient."

**Xavier Institute, Summer, 1970**

Professor Charles Xavier was also holding a meeting that morning, of the X-Men, to discuss Wolverine.

"This is what we know, X-Men. I have located Logan with Cerebro. He's in Canada, and he is alive. Just as he was the last time Miss Reinhardt saw him. Other than that, I can't say in what condition Logan is, mentally or physically, and when, or if he'll be returning."

"I don't see why you're so worried, Professor. He wore Miss Reinhardt out, and now he's probably drunk, and shacked up with a different girl for the summer. He'll be back." Cyclops volunteered.

"Maybe he just needed a vacation. And he just figures that we ought to know he's okay and he'll be back. You know Logan. He's not the reach out and touch someone type." Beast opined.

"I sink ve shoult go looking for him. Eff he vants to take a holiday, zen ve vill leaff him alone. But ve should find out for sure." Nightcrawler added.

Jean Grey got up out of her chair.

"I agree with Kurt! That girl could have been paid to deliver Logan into the hands of some old enemies! He might need our help. And while we're discussing Little Miss Irresistible, do any of the rest of you think she ought to be expelled? I'm the first one to agree with anybody who thinks Logan is far from perfect. He's crude, and he's got a filthy mouth, and he drinks too much and seems to be constructed primarily from hair and stink, and powered by beer. But you all know as well as I do that Logan is a decent man, an honourable man, even, and what this girl did to him was inexcusable. Just because he has healing ability doesn't mean that her powers didn't affect him. You gentlemen know yourself that before she learned to shield her powers you couldn't even be in the room with her without crawling the walls! Imagine if she was focusing them at you like a laser beam. You would have been doing her bidding, as well. This is not Logan's fault. But, being the old-fashioned type, he probably thinks it is. He's probably out there because he doesn't want to come back here with her again. We need to throw her out and get him back here. Wolverine is an X-Man, and a teacher at this school. That girl is some piece of trash that came in on the road looking for a man to hop on that she couldn't kill, so she could wrap him around her little finger."

Nightcrawler and the rest of the assembled X-Men were giving Jean an odd look.

"Jean, I don't zink zat vus ever Mel's intention. But, ztill, ve neet to find Logan. Vether she vanted to or not, ve don't know if Mel has done zomesing to his mindt."

Charles Xavier suddenly smiled.

"I think our problems are over, my X-Men. The phone is about to ring…"

The phone rang.

Professor X pushed the button for the speaker.

"Yes Operator, I will accept the charges, thank you. Well, good afternoon, Logan. Say hello to all of the X-Men."

"Awww, shit! What is this, some kinda ambush? Twice in one day!"

"See? I told you he was fine."

"Sure, I'm fine? What's gonna happen to me? Did Mel ever show up with your truck, Cyke?"

"Yeah. She just about wrecked it."

"I'll pay for that. It was my fault, I shoulda known better. But she handed me one 'a those reefers, and I'm like an Indian with whiskey when it comes to those things. I can't take it. Look, Charley, I'm sorry. If you want me out, I won't come back.."

"Nobody wants you out, Logan. It wasn't your fault!" Jean interrupted.

"Zat iz right, Logan. Mel must haff done zomsing to your mindt." Kurt added.

Wolverine laughed.

"What, you mean her spooky man-eater powers? Shit, I coulda let it go if I wanted to. I shoulda let it go, but, powers or no powers, I'm just a man, yunno?"

"Logan, I don't expect you to be any more than just a man, and you did partially follow my directions. And Miss Reinhardt did admit her fault in the matter, but she did not intend to rob you. Your things made their way back here in the mail before she did. And Scott insists he lent you his truck. But…"

"I know. You don't have to say it. If a guy with my background can fall like that for a twenty-year old girl, there must be something wrong. And it is my fault. Mel didn't do shit to my mind. I'm almost a hundred years old, she's not the first Nymph I had a spin with. Jack Daniels and Old Granddad and Jim Beam did something to my mind. I was drunk for two months. I really went on a tear."

"You certainly did, Logan. You were blind, stinking drink for two months, Logan. I've been worried about you. We all have. I hope that this embarrassing incident has led you to see the error of your ways."

"Charlie, I been wearing the same shorts for more'n a month. And for five weeks, while I was wearing out the boots on my feet and the shirt on my back, tryin' to find a dry place ta sleep in the rain an' a warm place ta sleep if it got cold at night, I kept telling myself how fucking stupid I've been. I just got some new clothes today, and I've got my shit together, now. I'm gonna take a little vacation with a lady who saved my ass. I'll be back in September, good as new."

"See? That's what I said. I knew you found some girl."

"Yeah, you know all about me, Cyke. I'm just that kinda man. She's one of us, a mask. Any of you know the Harlequin?"

"Oh no." Professor Xavier said,

"Napalm? You're with Naplam! Logan, you idiot! Is she there with you?" Jean exclaimed.

"She's in the shower, Jeannie."

"Good. Take your clothes, take your money and go. Don't say goodbye. Just start walking. I know Napalm. I went to school with her. I was her roommate at NYU for a semester, until they kicked her out of the dorms for the kind of conduct you wouldn't even expect from a drunken pirate. We were friends. We are friends. She's like the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When she's good, she's very, very good, and when she's bad she'll kill you with her bare hands. Liv can be a good friend, but she's a destroyer, by nature and by her scientific training. She's an avatar of entropy. And sometimes she gets the entropy that engenders creation mixed up with the simple forces of destruction, and that's when bad things begin to happen. Very bad things. Napalm even has a little maxim she likes to repeat. It's a pun on the first law of thermodymanics. Everything that can be created can also be destroyed. She'll think up a way, in her mind, to reduce you to your component parts, the way she does with everyone and everything, and if she gets drunk or crazy enough, she'll do it. She'll hate herself in the morning, she always does, and she'll try to make amends, but if you're dead, you'll still be dead."

Logan just laughed.

"I know Liv, Jeannie. I think I can handle it."

"I'm not so sure, Logan. You know Naplam in a completely different situation than this! Will you excuse me, I need to speak to Logan in private about Ms. Napier. Jean, I think you should stay." Professor X replied

Professor X waited until he and Jean were alone.

"Logan, I think it's noble of you to try and help the Harlequin. Who knows, you may actually be able to do it. I couldn't. Bruce sent her here to me, to try and help her, where many psychiatrists failed. I failed, too. That young woman's mind is, as they say, locked up tighter than a steel trap. There are parts of it she doesn't even permit herself to reach. She's very brilliant, but she's very damaged, and very angry. And when I say angry, I mean capable of a kind of blind, naked, uncontrollable rage that even I have rarely seen the equal of. The phrase "Heart of Darkness" comes to mind, and I really must warm you that until the Harlequin develops the emotional maturity to control that destructive force, master her intellect, and integrate the feuding aspects of her personality, anyone can be a potential target of her rage. Even you. Worse, she has a great degree of largely un-harnessed psi ability, as a result, most likely, of her chromosomal mutation."

"Liv's a mutant? I knew it! I always thought she was a feral. Besides, no woman's that strong!"

"Not really. Not the way you and I are mutants. She doesn't have the X-factor. So she doesn't have what we would consider powers. She is, however different from the average human being. Her mutation is chromosomal, one that's becoming more common in the human genome, but is still rather rare. Instead of having the normal female double X chromosomes, she has an X and a Y, like a man. Something she inherited from her mother, who, I'll bet, was probably called a witch…"

"Hey, Charlie, you can stop right there! I believe her mother was a witch, it makes sense considering her father is the Devil's own, but Liv's not a man. There's nothing male about her. I had a real good, up-close and personal look, a few of 'em, you can take my word for it."

"Yes…well…"

"Already? You slept with her already? Well, you probably didn't have a chance. She probably got drunk and mean and tore the clothes right off your back!" Jean interjected.

Professor X cleared his throat.

"I know the mutation hasn't been sexual in nature. Rather, it affected her non-sexual cells. Without going through a lot of science jargon, I can tell you that the mutation has made her physically stronger and more aggressive than the average woman, and, as it has in other cases, for some reason the mutation also greatly stimulates the intellect and manifests itself in greater psi abilities. And…"

"Charlie, I get it. I know I'm not dealing with some dumb cupcake. I know how smart she is. And I know how dangerous she is. I can deal with it. I like Liv. She's my kinda girl. And besides, I promised Bruce Wayne I'd get her home safe and sound and in one piece. Don't worry about me."

"Be careful, Logan. Don't underestimate the Harlequin. I hope to her from you again, before September." Professor X told him.

"I'll keep ya posted, Charlie."

"Professor, could I use your office for a few minutes to talk to Logan, privately?" Jean asked.

Xavier could not suppress the smile that leapt to his face.

"Certainly, Jean. I'm handing you over to Jean, now, Logan. Goodbye."

"Talk to ya soon, Charlie."

Professor X wheeled out of his office, and closed the door, laughing to himself.

"Hiya, Jeannie!"

Alone in the office, Jean let him have it.

"Logan, you no-good, sawed-off, drunken little degenerate! You rat! You slimeball! You scumbag! What the hell is the matter with you? The Professor gave you a chance to prove that you weren't a disgusting animal, and what did you do? I just covered your ass for you, _bub_! I convinced everybody it was that Reinhardt girl's fault and it was all because of her powers that you went hog wild and spent two months drunk off your ass and nailing her to the wall on every conceivable surface in the school. Of course, you and I both know you did it because you're a drooling, dirty old bastard who couldn't keep your paws out of that sleazy little flower-waif's cookie jar. And as if that wasn't bad enough, then you stole Scott's truck so you could go off half-crocked on some joyride with a sleazy little hippie grifter who mistook your dick for a Popsicle! And then you managed to let her get away with the truck and half of everything you own! How can anybody be that drunk? Or that stupid? You meathead! What if she was delivering you into the hands of your enemies? I suggest that from now on you try thinking with the big head, you dumb fucking oaf! How can you trade everything you worked for since the time you came here for a few cheap fucks and some sloppy blowjobs?"

Logan couldn't help it, he laughed.

"Settle down, Jeannie! I didn't even know you said nasty words like that, darlin'! D'you kiss Squeaky-Clean Scott with that dirty mouth? For shame, baby. You shouldn't talk to a man like that. I'm standing here naked and if I didn't have Liv in the shower waiting on me, I'd take matters into my own hands and ask you to say that again. So, you _were_ worried about me, huh? Does that mean I'm offa red and onto yellow? Cos I don't mind a woman with a dirty mouth. I kinda like it. Cyke seems like the kind of guy who likes it in the dark on Sundays with his BVD's on, but you can talk dirty to me any time you want, Red. "

"Logan, you pig! You insufferable, sawed-off little prick! Don't you _dare_ talk to me like that, you mass of hair and stink! I'm worried about the reputation of this Institute, that's what I'm worried about. I'm hanging up on you!"

"Wait, Jeannie. Don't get sore at me. I just wanted to let you know I was alright."

"That's the other thing! Logan, you are _not_alright! You are about as far from alright as any male human being can be. You're like the frog in the frying pan who's too dumb to hop out until he's cooked. You think you know Napalm? You don't know shit. You're alone with her now. She's got you where she wants you and she's not going to let you go. The Harlequin makes the Manson girls look like Girl Scouts. You do know what Napalm does, don't you? There's a trail of bodies behind her a mile long. And I know, that at least part of the time she's a brilliant scientist and historian, and I know, they were all bad guys and she gets the job done, and there's something to say for somebody who dedicates themselves to bringing justice, even if it is street justice, to the kinds of people that society and other superheroes ignore. And she's my friend, and I know her good side is as good as gold. But that doesn't change the fact that she's the Joker's daughter, and a violent, brutal alcoholic…nut job from Brooklyn who's known for mauling first and asking questions later. You're not an animal, Logan, but Liv is. She's a wild animal and a wild animal can always turn on you. Don't forget that. Look after yourself."

"Don't worry about me. What's she going to do to me?"

"Figure out just how she could possibly kill you and file it away in her mind. Listen to me, Logan. If she has the Troubles, do _NOT_piss her off. She'll pull up that file and we'll never see you again. Make sure you sleep with one eye open."

Just then Liv called to him from the shower.

"Are you gonna be on the phone forever, chief? I mean I'm waitin' for ya and I ain't washed any of the more innaresting bits of me, and I ain't used up all the hot water, yet." She announced.

"Didja hear that? I gotta go, darlin'. I gotta earn my keep." Logan chuckled.

"You think it's funny, Logan, and you think you're in the catbird seat because you're getting all the…oh hell, I'll say it, I said everything else…all the pussy you can handle, but I know Liv. She's my friend, but I know I can't trust her, and you can't either."

"Well, thanks for warning me, Jeannie. I'll be real careful." Logan laughed.

"You'll see, Logan. You'll see."

Jean hung up.

Logan grinned, wolfishly to himself.

"Jealous." He said.

Jean looked at the phone and then at her watch.

She called the operator, and got the number he had called from, and then called the motel and got the room number.

She left the Professor's office, having decided that she'd call back from her room in a little while to talk to Liv.

Napalm.

Of all the women in all the world Logan could have taken up with, he had to pick Napalm.

It figured.

Jean tried very hard not to think that, for once in her life, Napalm had the right idea; drunk and naked with Logan sounded like a fairly interesting way to spend your summer vacation.

She banished that thought from her mind as she banished the rest of its kind.

He wasn't her type; it was some kind of odd passing fantasy, something to do with mutant pheromones, most likely.

But, she did consider the feral little Sherman tank of a man her friend.

And Liv Napier was a friend to no man. When they were at NYU together, they were friends, roommates for awhile, but Jean knew all too well about Liv's dark side. Jean used to call her Napalm. when she got crazy and drunk and had her Troubles, she burned people down like they were made of paper, and any man who was dumb enough to get close to her got incinerated along with everything else in her occasional explosions of all-consuming wrath. Even when she wasn't in the midst of her troubles, she was still mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Goddamn Logan, thinking with the little head.

Even he was no match for Liv Napalm, the Harlequin.

He was going to get burned.

Bad.

Jean was a telepath, and she had seen what was inside of the Harlequin, and, until Liv learned how to control it, no one was safe around her.

Not even Wolverine.

**III: Logan**

The nearest campsite was a real family-oriented place, and when the proprietor had a look at the dirty, rumpled roughneck emerging from the hot-rod and the equally dirty, rumpled and rough-looking, heavily tattooed girl with hair down to her ass, he figured they must be bikers or hippies or both and announced he was full up.

The gent who ran the nearest cheap roadside motel, a series of rundown cabins advertised by a neon sign that said "Stop n Stay-Color TV-All Nite Diner" was more forgiving.

"Well, you folks look like you really need a room. There's a bath and a shower in every room, and color tee-vee. You want single beds or a double bed?"

"We ain't married. Does that matter?" Logan asked the big, burly man in the leather vest with his bald head and his long, bushy mountain-man beard.

"Is the young lady of age, and has she got ID to prove it?"

"Sure she is! Hey, bub, what kinda man d'you think I am? Some kinda baby raper?"

"No offence, friend. But the law's the law, right? Now, As long as she's over 18, I've got nothing to say about the sleeping arrangements. It's a free country, live and let live, I always say. Now, how many nights would you like? We got a weekend special going, two nights for the price of one. House rules, though, you pay when you check in."

"You wanna stay two nights, Liv?"

"Sure. Why not. It's been a long time since I slept in a bed."

Liv produced her New York driver's licence.

"See? I'm twenty." She told the manager.

Logan winced, involuntarily.

First Mel, and now Liv.

These horny little baby boomer girls, they were like the poison candy that tasted so good you didn't care if it killed you.

God damn, the kid was just a kid.

No wonder Bruce was going out of his skull.

But they had cash and they could write their names, and that was good enough for the manager.

"Can we bring beer in here, bub?"

"You sure can, friend. And if you run out, my brother sells beer right over at the diner, by the glass, by the six pack, and by the case. And if you want, I can send my son here out for liquor. Just a two dollar delivery charge plus the price of your booze." He said, cheerfully.

The son was a surly, half-stoned long-haired pretty boy with a face like a choirboy on Sunday morning to whom Liv was giving a look like a wolf eyed a rabbit it was planning on eating.

She leaned over and whispered one word in Logan's ear.

"Prey." She said.

He tried not to laugh.

"Thanks, bub. Just give the lady the room key, for now."

The room in question was nothing special. There was a TV, a bed, two chairs and a table, an end table with a phone on it and a Bible in it and a lamp, a bathroom, and a closet, but it might as well have been a palace to two people who hadn't seen a bed since they had been robbed and abandoned to their fates.

The kid hit the shower, first, and, Logan took off his unspeakably dirty clothes before he sat on the clean bed and looked at the telephone for a few minutes before placing a collect call to the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning.

After Logan completed his phone calls, he went into the bathroom, and got a little dirtier with Liv, and then they came out of the bathroom and fell into the bed.

The phone began to ring almost immediately.

Liv answered it as Logan dozed, happily.

"Hello? Oh, hiya, Jean. I thought I was gonna be hearing from you."

"I'll bet you did. Now listen to me, Napalm. Logan isn't just some big dumb piece of meat you picked up in a biker bar fresh from Riker's Island, or one of those willowy young fanboys with hair down to his asshole and a roach in his pocket next to his dick that you use and toss away like Kleenex. He's the Wolverine. He's a very important man, to the superhero community, and to the X-Men, and besides, the dirty little bastard is my friend, and I do not want you to kill him."

"What? What the fuck am I gonna do to him, Jean? And why would I wanna kill Logan? I mean, even if I wanted to kill the man I'd have to cut off his head and throw it someplace he couldn't get his hands on it to stick it back on in two seconds and gut me like a fish."

Logan suddenly woke up when he heard her say that.

That was pretty much the only conceivable way to kill him that he could think of.

"See? You already figured out how to do it!"

"So? I'm a scientist, I figure things out. What am I gonna use to do it? How do I get close enough without getting sliced and diced? Jean, I'm lyin' next to the man in bed, I'm not gonna kill him."

"What? Don't tell me you might actually want to know a man for more than ten minutes after you've screwed him! Figures it would be Logan."

"You sound jealous. Am I stepping on your toes?"

"Don't make me laugh. He's your type, not mine. Now, we have business to discuss. Business named Melanie Reinhardt. Don't say her name on that line. The little jerk is probably attached to her."

"Men are like that. What do you have in mind?"

"I'd like to really put the fear of God into her. Make sure she leaves Logan alone. For good. I'll take care of her little pea brain…and you can take care of her skinny little ass."

"Break some bones?"

"Yes. In her face."

"Sounds good to me."

"Alright, I'm hanging up. Remember, Liv, if you harm a hair on his head…"

"Yeah. You'll reduce me to my component parts."

Liv turned to Logan and winked at him.

"Oh, and Jean? If I were you, I'd definitely take him for a spin. The man's good. Real good. Shit, if you want me too, I'll write youse a detailed , signed, personal recommendation."

"I am hanging up on you, now, Napalm. You and Logan enjoy your debauch."

"We will."

Liv hung up the phone, and started to laugh.

"Boy, Logan, you really are in like Flynn. She's crazy about you. Jean Grey is a genuine blueblood and she always expected to be treated like one. If anybody, let alone a man, dared to call her something like Jeannie, she would have never spoken to them again. She always went around with these clean-cut preppy types, but I caught her more than once giving the old lean and hungry look to some hairy, filthy biker I rolled up to the lecture hall with on a Monday morning. Man, I'll bet she took one look at you and thought she'd died and gone to heaven. And she called here just to tell me what she would do to me if I went off my head and punched your ticket, and it wasn't blueblood, ladylike, or pretty. She's mad for you, my man."

"I hope you're right, kid. I'm really in love with her.

"No shit, for real? Must be nice. Me, I can't do that kind of thing."

"Aww, you just haven't met the right man."

"Yes I have. That's my problem. But, someday my prince will come, right? I only hope I get to come first."

Liv moved over to the other end of the bed and put the TV on.

"Yunno, man, when you're a mask, life's a funny thing. One day you're going slowly crazy in the woods making chump change breaking chump's jaws waiting for the clothes to rot off your back so you can be an apeman, and they next you're cruising down the road with almost two grand in your pocket, taking a nice leisurely revenge jaunt across the Great White North with the only hundred year old man in North America who can get it up three times in 24 hours."

"Four times, kid. And I'm sorry about that, but I was kinda worn out last night. Too much drinkin' and not enough food. I'll be up to my usual standards, later."

"Man, you sure are the best at what you do, and for my money, it was real fuckin' nice."

Logan was about to tell her that she'd never seen him in action, foaming at the mouth and snarling in rage with his claws guts-deep in some poor bastard's vitals.

But then he remembered that she had, and it didn't seem to bother her.

Things had gone pretty catastrophically bad when a few brain surgeons decided they were going to rob the bar where him and the kid had been drinking, and kill everyone in it.

Turns out the only deaths were of the four bad guys.

The fourth of which the kid accounted for.

Caught unarmed, in a knife fight, she let him stab her in the arm, pulled his knife out and slit his throat with it, but for Logan's money, the way that rib went into his lungs after she crunched them, he wouldn't have made it through the night.

He wondered if that was when she started wearing the network of holsters for three guns and two knives under her clothes.

She leaned over and turned the knob, trying to find something she liked.

"You know what? I haven't killed anybody for almost two months? And I don't miss it. I guess I'm not as crazy as I thought I was."

"You still doin' the dirty work, Napalm?"

"I sure am. It's a dirty job, the job I do, and I'm swimming in the deep end of the pool with the sharks. But, hey somebody's gotta do it. Everybody deserves justice. The way I see it, the city's a fuckin' jungle, man. If you're not a predator, you're prey. All the kids who come to hang out and be hippies or make it in showbiz or go to college, they're all prey. And the forgotten people, bums and junkies and hookers and poor people who live crowded into the same tenements their grandparents and great grandparents lived in, cowering under the yoke of the mob and every other slob and two-bit criminal motherfucker who runs the slums, nobody gives a fuck for them. Except me. I do. They all know, everybody in New York knows, you got trouble where the cops can't or won't help, you call the Harlequin. I started trying to protect them and everybody else when I was 16 years old. I can't believe how fast four years goes by. Somebody's always got a knife or a gun or a piece of chain, or they wanna kick you and punch you and beat you with brass knuckles and trash can lids. They beat ya, they shoot ya, they stab ya. And you do the same. Somebody walks away. Sometimes the one who doesn't walk away, dies. I learned that from Bruce and from my father. Known it since I was eleven years old. Maybe that's not the way the world is for other people, but that's the way it is for me."

"Yeah. Me too, darlin'. Except I'm not out there trying to fix it all on my own, and when I get stabbed and beaten and shot and my bones broken, I heal."

"So do I. It just takes longer. And I got the scars to prove it."

She did. In the light of the motel room, he could see some serious scars along with the tattoos on the kid's body.

"What happened when you were eleven years old?"

"I killed a guy."

That stopped him, cold.

Considering her size, now, five one, maybe five-two, probably about 145, when she was eleven she must have been truly a tiny little thing.

"How the fuck did that happen?" he asked

"I was in the car with the guy who was lookin' after me while my Old Man was in the joint, before I met Bruce. Mac. Mac's brother, Kevin, he died four years before owing my father and the Mob. And some half-assed wiseguy came up to the car, to collect on Kevin's debts. Mac froze when he saw him put his hand in his coat, but I didn't. The Old Man, he made me ready for shit like that to happen. I reached for the gun the Old Man gave me when I was six. Snub-nosed .45 revolver. I still carry it in the holster by my ankle to this day. He told me to never go anyplace without it, and to make sure I practised shooting ever day. I never have, and I always do. Anyway, me and the hitman fired at the same time. He shot Mac once before I put five bullets through the car door and into him. Two in the chest, two in the guts and one right between the eyes. Blam! Then I drove Mac to the hospital. It was the first time I ever drove, too. Mac made it. The hitman didn't."

She didn't seem too upset about it.

She didn't seem too upset about any of it, one way or the other.

That was her problem.

"Hey, Liv, lay off on the whole stone-cold killer routine. You wanna know why you can't sleep at night? Because you keep lyin' to yourself that it don't bother you and you don't give a shit. Everybody who does what we do gives a shit. The trick is to find a way to live with it, not bullshit yourself that you don't care. Are you listenin' to me?"

Logan grabbed hold of her arm, and squeezed.

"Yeah. I'm listenin'."

"Good. Cos if you pretend to be a stone cold killer with no human feelings at all, you'll turn into one. And you don't want that, trust me. You do know you should only kill when you absolutely have to, right?"

Liv pulled her arm away.

"Sure I know that. That was the first thing Bruce taught me. Kinda wish the bad guys knew that one. I'd have a few less scars. I got a lotta little scars you really can't see. But I got maybe ten real noticeable ones. And nine tattoos. It's a thing with me, every time I get a scar that the wound coulda taken my life, I get a new tattoo that somehow reminds me of it."

"I noticed the one in your shoulder."

"That's from the .45. That fuckin' hurt! Still hurts."

Liv switched of the TV, rolled over and went back up towards where the pillows were, and lay down.

"It feels good to lie down. I'm so fuckin' tired. Goddamn horse doctor said it would hurt. He said the bullet took a lot of soft tissue out with it, and that the impact, or some related impact dislocated my shoulder. Said it would take a long time to heal, and that because the bullet nicked the bone and ripped the muscle up, it was gonna hurt worse than the other times I got shot. He was right. Every time I move my arm it hurts. Especially the way I was punchin' that Paul Bunyan cocksucker last night. Felt good when I was hittin' him, but it don't now. Hurts. Bad. And I got one more tattoo to get. "

Logan sat up beside her, and took a good look at her shoulder in the light.

That was a very fresh scar, indeed.

"Something you're not tellin' me, Liv?"

"Well, I didn't think it was important."

"I promised the Bat that I'd get you home to home safe and sound. It's important. And that's a real fresh scar, kid."

Liv reached for a cigarette

"Slim did it. I didn't even know the cocksucker had a gun. Good thing the asshole didn't know that my heart was on my left, not his. Shot right through the window, and off he went. Left me on the side of the road, to die. That was one goddamn big bullet to take at close range. Left a big insulting hole on the way out, as you can see from the scarring. It was pretty bad. One minute I was asleep, and the next I had a lap full of glass and I was shot. Took some glass in my neck and my arms, too. And I never took a bullet in the chest, before. It hurt like a motherfucker. I had my gun in my hand in about a minute, flat, and I just pushed myself out the car door, and tried to go after him, but I wasn't going anywhere except onto the ground. I couldn't even stand up, I must been in shock or something. I got a shot or two off, but they were wild. I must have hit my head or passed out from the pain, cos I woke up face down on the ground, bleeding, with broken glass all around me. I remember when I got back in the car I saw there was a bullet-hole in the driver's seat. Went clean through. The bullet's still back there, lodged in the back seat. I just sat there in the car for a minute or two, bleeding, and I thought this was it, I'm gonna die out here."

Liv stopped to light up, again.

"But I figured I'd give it the old college try. My survival training kicked in. I got out again and I literally crawled to the trunk where I keep the first aid kid, and I made a tourniquet and drove like hell to the next place where there might be people. After about a half-hour I came to this bar, and I staggered in and told them I was shot, but they could see that. I woulda fallen down again but this guy caught me. Some of the guys put me up on a table and the bartender used towels to stop me bleeding until some other guy came back with a doctor. The son of a bitch was a veterinarian, but he knew enough to patch me up and give me some penicillin. I didn't want the fuzz in on it because I wanted Slim, myself, so I just split after I saw the doctor and I went and made my first camp. I cleaned up the car and put some plastic on the window. Then I just laid around for a week, in the back seat, mostly, takin' my medicine and sleepin and usin' my arm a little more, bit by bit, and when I was feeling good enough I drove back out in the car to get a beer. That was where I had my first fight; I only picked it to see if my arm was good, again. So I bought some glass for the window and I fixed it, and after that, I got in the wind, and you know the rest. Don't look at me like that, Logan. It's the fifth time I've been shot, it don't really slow me down much anymore. I took a bullet for the first time when I was eleven, too. Went through Mac and into me. It was just a flesh wound, though."

"I'm not lookin' at you like that, kid. I'm thinking about that motherfucker in Toronto and all the ways he deserves to die."

Wolverine was furious. What kind of man seeks out a woman who did as much for him as Liv, and then lures her out onto the middle of the wilderness and shoots her in the chest while she's sleeping, and leaves her to die on the side of the road?

And for nothing, too. The bastard didn't have to rob her. Bruce Wayne was loaded. Jack Napier was loaded. She probably had one hell of a trust fund waiting for her to be 21, and she could afford to just get three G's together and split town. And when she had next to nothing and was camped in the woods half-savage, Liv had given him her last crumbs of food.

She probably would have just given the fucker the money if he'd asked for it.

Logan thought about Liv, half-crazy and far from home and everybody that loved her, lying on the side of the road beside her open car door, unconscious and facedown in a pool of blood and broken glass.

That was way beyond being a junkie, somebody like that was a vicious stone-cold killer with no regard for human life.

The kind who's going to kill and kill again.

"Liv, I wasn't serious about it before, but you and me, we are gonna find that motherfucker and we're gonna kill him."

Liv looked surprised at how furious he was.

"I can do it myself. This isn't your fight."

"It is, now. For one thing, a man who shoots a woman in cold blood doesn't deserve to live. And nobody fucks with my friends, especially not a fellow mask, and gets away with it. That fuckin' asshole is goin' down. And if anybody gets in our way, they had better be smart enough to get out of it or else." Wolverine snarled, extending the claws on both of his hands.

_Snikt!_

"Sounds like a plan to me." Liv agreed.

Logan retracted his claws.

Liv got quiet.

She lay there, rubbing her shoulder, probably thinking about all the horrible shit that had befallen her in the past few months.

Poor kid.

He was about to put his arm around her, and try to comfort her a little, and that's when Liv jumped out of the bed like it was on fire and started putting her clothes on.

Logan was confused.

A few minutes ago she was clinging him, and screaming out all the filthy things she wanted him to do to her, and they had pretty much been up all night the night before, going at it, and now, all the sudden, she didn't want him to touch her.

Come to think of it, she did turn her head away almost every time he tried to kiss her, too, and she was all curled up with her back to him on the blanket.

"You okay, Liv?"

"Yeah. I'm just hungry. Let's go eat."

Walking into the diner was the first time that Wolverine and the Harlequin had been amongst normal folks for a long time.

And even though they were both freshly scrubbed and wearing clean clothes, brand-new in Logan's case, he noticed they still got The Look.

He checked Liv's reaction and the way she ignored it, he figured she was as used to getting that look as he was.

For some reason, she had arranged her hair in two pigtails on either side of her head and got a Coke to drink.

"You're makin' me feel like I'm some kinda pervert, Napalm. You're only 20. You really are a kid."

"How old do you think Little Miss Goldilocks was who brought you on this wild goose chase? Yunno, Logan, you spent too much time in the good old US of A. You were starting to act like an American."

Liv adopted a dumb Southern drawl.

"Drivin' around in a shiny new red Chevy pickup truck, with reeeel big tires, drinkin' a beer, listenin' to Merle Haggard on the radio, smokin' a two-dollar ceee-gar an' gittin' yer pole smoked by a sweet young thang. Yeeee-haw! Waaaal, doagies!"

Then she laughed evilly at her own joke.

"Kid, you are some kind of sick…."

"Not that I blame you. Nothin' quite like gettin' head while you're drivin'. You get on the open road, and get the car up around eighty or ninety, put on the radio, get a good song, have a drink, and then ya turn to that special someone in the seat beside you, and you tell 'em that they're goin' down like the Hindenburg or they're walkin' home. Maaaaan, that's good."

"You're an animal. A goddamn animal, do you know that?"

"And?"

"Do I get to drive, sometimes?"

"Sure ya do."

John Price catered to all kinds of travellers, coming off the road at the Stop 'n Stay, some of whom were more colourful and dangerous than others.

Some of them, he thought, warranted someone to keep an eye on them, and the short, burly man and the even shorter red-haired girl he came in with warranted it.

From the look of them, they had both been in the bush a long time, and there was something both colourful and dangerous about them.

Not so much dangerous to him, but, to someone who rubbed them the wrong way, holy shit.

Around two in the morning, the man came into the main cabin, with a paper sack in his big, meaty paw.

He was probably about thirty-five or forty, the girl was twenty.

The man was barefoot and shirtless; it was obvious he'd just gotten out of bed and put his jeans on to go to the front desk.

"I need a pack of Camels. No filters."

"I got cigars."

"They're not for me."

He looked like he had something on his mind.

While Price was getting the smokes, he saw the man put his elbows on the desk and run his huge hands through his wild black hair.

He was big for a little guy, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, muscular and hairy as a dog. Despite his short stature, he looked like he could handle just about anything and that he was used to doing just that.

Except now something was still bothering him.

He didn't seem like a bad guy, just a tough guy. A tougher guy that Price himself was, and John Price was a real mountain man, he had seen and done some things in his life. He had been gone a long time, but Price still detected a slight accent on him, he was probably from up around the border with the Yukon, where old-fashioned tough guys like him grew out of the snow.

He bit off a little more than he could chew with the red-haired girl. She looked like she had problems, big ones, and this hairy little Sherman tank of a man was just beginning to find out how big.

And he didn't know what the hell he was going to do, next.

"Something on your mind, fella? About that girl, maybe?" John Price asked.

"Yeah. There's nothing I can do for her. Other than what I already done. And that ain't gonna help her, much." The man said.

John Price gave him the cigarettes, took the money, made change.

"I don't know, fella. Sometimes the only thing a woman needs from a man is for him to shut up and be a man." he replied.

"I dunno, bub. The kid's real gun shy. Anyway, you got a laundry here that we can use?" He asked, putting the paper sack on the desk

"Not usually, but, you two look like you were in the woods a long time. Just leave that here with me, and I'll have the maid wash your things along with the sheets."

"Thanks, bub."

"Don't think twice, it's alright. Good night, sir. Oh, and one more thing."

"Yeah?"'

"When you say gun shy, you mean to say as how she won't let you out of bed, but if you try to touch her any other way, she just about jumps outa her skin?"

"How'd you know?

"I've got one of those at home. Came in off the road with a knife in her boot, a gun in her purse, a black eye and an armful of needlemarks. A real hard case. She's only a year older than my son, but the wife's been dead a long time, and she's a wonderful girl. I couldn't figure her out, though, for the longest time. Until I realised, John, you're the first man who ever wanted to touch her any other way. These tough girls, men always assume they don't need affection. Or tenderness. But they do. Hell, everybody does. No matter how tough they are. You and me, we're both tough guys and we both know how that's the one thing the world never shows you when they see you're a real hard case. A little tenderness, a little kindness. People think you don't have a heart, but you do. Think back, mister. Think about the first woman who ever made you feel like you were a man, and not a draft animal who was there to service her. If you never met that woman, if I never met my wife, may God rest her soul, we'd be rotting in jail with all the other tough guys who got so cold and hard and ill used they didn't hardly know they were men, anymore. Hell, it ain't no different for a woman. It's probably worse on them."

"Yeah. I guess it would be."

"I suppose I should just keep my mouth shut, but that's the way I see it, mister. Just one tough old Canuck to another, right?"

"Yeah. Right. Thanks, bub. I think…I think I'm gonna go take a walk."

John Price watched him go, and then he busied himself, tidying up the desk.

A little tenderness, a little kindness.

Wolverine took a walk around outside, thinking, before he went back to the room.

He thought about when the Hudsons found him living like a wild animal in the wilderness, and taken him in and showed him how to be a man, again.

He thought about how Charlie had showed him mercy, given him something to believe in, and trusted him to be a teacher and a leader and a hero.

He remembered back in the war, with Cap and Eddie, how they treated him like a friend and not a freak.

He thought about all the women he'd loved, and all their fathers who'd given him the benefit of the doubt to do it.

A little tenderness, a little kindness, that's what had saved him from madness and despair, from evil and savagery.

He thought all the way back to Silver Fox.

Like the big guy said, she made him feel like he was a man, not an animal, or a freak.

The first time she rolled over and put her head on his chest and put her arms around him, he'd felt like he was going to jump out of his skin, too.

Liv was a pretty tough broad. She had five bullet holes in her ornery little hide, and nine going on ten tattoos to mark all of the times that a knife or a gun or maybe a pair of brass knuckles and a piece of pipe had almost taken her life from her. With what she did and where she did it, and her whole 'Nam vet with shell shock look with three guns on her body and motor oil under her fingernails, she probably didn't run into a lot of men she didn't scare the hell out of, and the kind that she didn't weren't the types to show kindness or tenderness to anybody.

Maybe you ended up here for a reason, Logan. Maybe it's time for you to pay back all of the people who let you eat out of their hands even though you were rabid and foaming at the mouth by putting your hand in the jaws of a mad dog.

She's a real young girl, and she was raised by a psycho supervillain who might have meant well, but that's no way for a kid to grow up. Then she spent four years in the mean streets, doing a dirty job, all alone.

Bruce managed to give her a real family and a home, but it's possible that all that is to her is a place to lie and lick her wounds before she had to go out on the prowl again.

Maybe all the kid knows in the world is lust, and rage, and violence, or maybe she does know better, but maybe she had gone so deep into the dirty end of the pool, into the gutter, and the sewer, like she said, that she had just forgotten there was anything else.

You know all about forgetting, Logan, especially forgetting how to be a human being.

And what makes you remember?

A little kindness, a little tenderness.

It's worth a try.

When Logan got back to the room, Liv had the TV on, and the covers were pulled up to her nose as Christopher Lee glided across the screen to claim his next victim.

"Got your smokes. You like this kinda stuff?"

"Yeah. I love horror movies. Especially the British ones. Jesus, I wish I could get him to bite my neck."

Wolverine cracked another beer, drank some, put the can on the nightstand next to Liv's beer, took off his pants and got back into bed.

She tried to move over, but it was a small bed and he took up a lot of space in it so there was nowhere for her to go.

She stiffened up a little.

Never slept in the same bed with anybody crazy enough to lie down with her, she said.

Then she must trust me, a little bit.

He watched the movie with her for awhile, waiting for her to relax, and then he casually put his arm around Liv, and she went completely tense and rigid, like she was about to leap out of the bed and run away.

Jesus, didn't even one of the yellow little punks and big fuckin' stupid monsters and all of the sons of bitches in between ever even put his arm around her like she was something more than a dangerous animal?

Probably not.

"What? You don't wanna watch this scary movie all alone, do yuh? That's why they make these movies, you know. So little girls like you can get all scared and have to hang onto big guys like me to keep you safe." He joked.

"When I watch TV with my friend, Joe Mac, he always puts his arm around me. I've known Joe since I was seven." Liv said.

"Yeah, well we're friends ain't we, Liv? I mean we once got drunk together and killed a whole buncha guys. And you just saved my ass, and I saved yours, right? If that don't make us friends, what does? Oh, and I got ya some smokes. I noticed you were out and crawlin' up the wall."

"Thanks. Couldja pass me my beer?"

Liv relaxed against him and Logan held her a little closer

"Sure. Holy shit, look at the tits on that one! I'd be bitin' her a little lower, if I was him."

He took a couple of sidelong looks at her in the darkened room, with just the horror movie flickering on the TV for light, and she had a funny look on her face, like somebody who eats Chinese food for the first time and realises it doesn't taste as funny as it looks.

After the movie was over, Liv got up and went to the can, and Logan reached for the clicker in the nightstand and turned of the TV.

They had the blind open, so you could see the moon coming in.

Liv got back into bed.

"After all that time sleepin' on the ground or in the car, this bed feels like heaven." She sighed

"You tired, Liv?"

"I'm not that tired."

This time, when he tried to kiss her on the lips, she didn't pull away, although she seemed more interested in him kissing her in other places.

A little kindness, a little tenderness.

One thing no man in the world had ever showed her.

They never realised that even a mad dog needs a warm place to lie in the sun, and someone to pat it on the head and say kind words to it.

Something Wolverine knew all too well about.


	3. Bound By Blood REREVISED & UPDATED

**Chapter 3: Bound By Blood RE-REVISED & UPDATED!**

**New York State, Summer 1970: Justice League HQ**

"…and, we have some good news, today. Bruce has finally located our AWOL trainee. Where was she again, Bruce? The Yukon?"

Batman stood up.

"British Columbia, actually. I got a phone call from…from a highly placed member of the X-Men. They've teamed up on a mission to ferret out a dangerous drug dealer and murderer. He's based in Toronto, but they've been tracking him across Canada. Liv should be finished with that mission and home by September."

Batman's words were met with an uneasy silence before Superman spoke again, first clearing his throat.

Clark knew that Bruce was gilding the lily, but he wanted to give the Harlequin some semblance of dignity, and the benefit of the doubt.

"So she is safe, then, and one of the X-Men is assisting her?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, as Bruce well knows, the Joker has been out of Arkham for quite some time now and he's been unusually quiet…"

Dick Grayson kept his thoughts to himself until he and Bruce Wayne were in the Batmobile.

"Bruce, why did you lie like that? Everyone knew you were lying. You and I both know word on the street travels fast. I mean, you can't even call that stretching the truth."

"What the hell do you want me to say, Dick?" Batman snapped.

Robin was surprised at his vehemence.

"Gee Bruce…I…I…"

"You what? You want me to stand in front of the Justice League, of which I am a co-founder, of whom your sister is a trainee, soon to be a member and tell them that she left New York in a state of almost complete mental derangement on a drunken whim to go to Canada and shack up with a draft-dodging junkie named Slim and that he blew a large hole in her, robbed her and left her by the side of the road to die? And when Clark asks me when she'll be back, perhaps I can explain to everyone she'll be home as soon as she hunts the dog down in Toronto and kills him, but she's taking her time because she ran into Wolverine in a bar and they've both been swimming around in the same jug of whiskey for a month or so, and they'll get around a little revenge as soon as he gets up from between her legs long enough for both of them to sober up and get back in the car?"

"No, I guess you couldn't."

They were both silent.

Bruce sighed, regretfully.

"I suppose I shouldn't have said that. It was unkind."

"At least she'll be with one man all summer. And a decent man. That's an improvement."

"That's true. I'm glad she ran into Logan. Because he's a good man, and he's a skilled mask, and he'll take care of her. He's one of the few people on God's Green Earth who can take care of her."

"So, why don't you give her to Wolverine instead of to Eddie Blake?"

"I am not giving Liv to anyone. I'm going to try to apprentice her to the Comedian to complete her training. It's a crazy thing, the mission she's taken on, but it's a noble one. But she can't do it on her own, and she certainly can't just keep bluffing her way through the way she does. Your sister swims in the dirty end of the pool, Dick. She needs a shark who knows the waters well to show her how not to drown."

"And you think he's a good man at heart? Eddie Blake?"

"Some people think he is. I think he can do it."

"And Logan can't? He's got some rough edges, but Logan is a decent, moral human being. I think he'd be a hell of a lot better."

"He thinks he can. I could tell from his tone on the phone. But Logan's a troubled man. Between our military and intelligence and the Canadians, the man's memories are more full of holes than a Swiss Cheese. I wouldn't presume to throw Liv's problems onto his plate. Besides, he hasn't met the Heart of Darkness that beats in your sister's chest. When he does, he'll be glad to see she's coming home with us."

"For one thing, Bruce, I think you're selling Logan short. Not to mention Liv. She's her father's daughter, not her father. And a Heart of Darkness? That's kind of corny, isn't it? Would this be the same Heart of Darkness that beats in Eddie Blake? So we have to destroy Liv in order to save her? Don't you think that's melodramatic and unnecessary, Bruce?"

"Dick, the affectionate nickname that her friends bestowed on your sister is Napalm. No, I don't."

* * *

**Saigon, Summer 1970**

Several American GI's wished they had a camera on them, anyone who had a camera on them took pictures.

It wasn't every day you saw Captain America and the Comedian together, especially sitting at a bar having a few beers like regular guys.

Steve Rogers was paying a visit to boost troop morale, and he had stopped to have a drink with the only member of the original Invaders active in Vietnam.

"Bring us another one, okay, toots?" Eddie Blake barked at a Vietnamese woman who jumped at his every request.

"Thanks." He said, giving her a quick smile and a smack on the ass before he dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

"Sure not like home. You do that to an American girl, she'll slap your face off and call you a fuckin' asshole."

"If you ever did that to Sophie in front of anybody, she would have shot you. Didn't she take a shot at you, once?"

"Yeah. At the Christamas party, back in '46. Fuck, were we both drunk. An' high on reefers. Me an Sophie, all we did was screw, go out on the town, drink, an' smoke reefers. Shit, for two years after the war, I didn't know what end was up. But I'll tellya something about Soph. She's got spirit. Most American girls, they got spirit. And something for a man to hang his hands on. These gook broads, they're flat as a fuckin' surfboard. Still, I guess none of these gooks are taller than about five foot nothing and they all prob'ly got a dick like a stack of dimes, so she knows what side of the bread the butter's on. "

Eddie sighed, and had a drink.

"Still, I'd do just about anything to get my hands on a nice redhead or blonde with tits out to here."

"You never change, Eddie."

"Why should I? The world hasn't. So, did Jimmy turn up yet? I hear he's been AWOL for about a month, now. Hadda go back to the X-Men after his tour. They need him. Sure. More like they use him as a combination tank an' human shield. An' now I'm stuck with his asshole brother. So, did he turn up?"

Steve Rogers took a drink of his beer.

"Yeah, he did. He went to the Yukon, with some Institute student he's been fooling around with who sold him a story about visiting her sick grandmother. Some crazy biker girl. She left him flat, and he made it to BC on foot. Where he hooked up with Trouble. With a capital T-R-O-U-B-L-E."

"Trouble, huh? What's her name?"

Steve gave his old army buddy a look of disbelief.

But, if that was the way he wanted to play it...

"Harlequin."

"So, Jimmy's runnin' with the kid, huh? Wonders never cease."

The Comedian had a good laugh.

"You find that funny, Eddie?"

"He doesn't know what the fuck he's gettin' into, does he? You know the kid. Shit, I've known the kid all her life. Ya know that. She's a good mask and she does good work, but she's fuckin' nuts. Especially about men. That kid is completely fuckin' cock-struck, and she gets so drunk she don't know what the fuck she's doin. An' when she wants you, she don't ask nice. You got your choice. You're comin, or you're goin!"

Eddie thought it was funny.

"Yeah, I know, Eddie. I know all about Napalm. I hear about her all the time from Bruce and Clark. And I've seen some of her work. They should have sent her in on this final offensive with you and Jon. This war would be over, already."

"Yeah, well, a war like this in fuckin' jungle hell like this ain't good for somebody who's friends call her Napalm. So, what the fuck is she doing in Canada?"

"You don't know?"

"I know she went off with that Slim MacLeod asshole. I know she's been in a bad way since she had a run in with some mass murderer."

"It was an errand of mercy. Going to Canada with MacLeod. And I think she figured she had to get out of the city; Eddie, saying she was in a bad was is the understatement of the year. So, she bugged out, and nobody heard from her for a month. That worried Bruce, so she went looking for her. Tracked her to a dried up bloodstain on a remote road way up near the Yukon. That dirty SOB MacLeod put shot her at point-blank range through the window while she was sleeping off a drunk in her car, robbed her blind, and left her to die. She made it, though. She's tough."

"What? Son of a bitch!"

That really got the Comedian's goat, but Cap wasn't surprised.

"How the fuck did she make it?" he wanted to know

"Unfortunately for him, it was only one bullet. And you know Liv. She's a survivor. Now they're both coming for him. Wolverine and the Harlequin."

"Good! I'd hate to be that sorry motherfucker! The cowardly sunnuvabitch is finally gonna get what he deserves!"

Eddie was getting in a very black mood, so Cap tried to distract him.

"Yeah. And so is Jimmy. Maybe unfortunately for him, too. You know, Eddie, crazy girls like him almost as much as they like you. I think he looks for them. If there's a crazy redheaded girl within a twenty-mile radius, he'll sniff her out. And a crazy red-haired superhero whose favourite things are fast cars, bad men, big guns, and bar fights? He probably thinks he's died and gone to heaven."

Cap suddenly regretted that last statement.

You put your foot in your mouth on that one, Steve.

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry, Eddie. I was just making a little joke."

"Sorry? About what? Shit, that's the kinda heaven I wanna fuckin' well go to! What, you think i give a shit? I know where I stand with the kid. An' Jimmy, me an' him, we're like brothers. An as for the kid, I know her. Jimmy's not gonna be able to keep her in line, holdin' her hand, that's for sure."

"You would know, Eddie."

"Me? What makes youse think that? An' why should you be sorry, Steve?" Eddie asked him, grinning.

He changed the subject.

"Hey, y'wanna 'nother beer?"

He snapped his fingers to summon the Vietnamese girl.

"Hey, Toots? Two more beers!"

The girl immediately rushed to do his bidding.

Clearly, Liv Napier wasn't the only woman who, as Eddie put it, thought the sun rose and set in his pants.

"Do you know her real name?"

"Yeah. But I can't pronounce it. So I just call her Toots. She don't mind, so long as my wallet stays fat and my dick don't go down for long."

"Geez, Eddie!"

"What? You know how it is, Cap. She works in this dive, she ain't got much, maybe she's got a whole gook family in the country waitin' on her dough. I ain't the only rooster in that henhouse. But, I may be the only guy who ever took a second look at her, and as long as the Big Bad Wolf is around, she ain;t gotta worry about alla the little dogs sniffin' around an' snappin' at her heels."

Captain America, still working on the first beer the Vietnamese girl brought him, had to wonder if Eddie was ever going to figure out why it was that women didn't stick with him for too long.

He began to see the advantages of Bruce's plan, not for the Harlequin, but for the Comedian.

Maybe she could smack some sense into him, before some girl got tired of Eddie's attitude, and stuck a knife in him or put a bullet between his eyes while he was sleeping.

That was no way for a great American hero to die, and, as much as Cap knew that Colonel Blake wasn't the best of men, in fact, he was pretty much the good bad guy, Steve had known Eddie since he was a young pup; and they had been friends for years.

He knew that Eddie had good in him, and he wouldn't want to see him go that way.

Even if the crazy SOB did deserve it, in a way.

In the meantime, "Toots" brought the beers.

"Okay, Mr. Eddie. Two more beers. You want whiskey, too?"

"You tryna get me drunk, Toots? What's the matter? Ya need a night off?"

She giggled.

"Not from you, Mr. Eddie!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, doll."

Steve looked at the girl, and she was gazing at Eddie with a mixture of gratitude, awe, and yes, lust.

Captain America took a sip of his beer, and shook his head.

She must be a crazy one, too, he thought.

* * *

**II: Liv**

I gotta say, I don't understand some people and their problem with Logan.

Them and "Oh, he's an animal, and he's a savage and he's anti-social and he's got a bad attitude," and everything else I heard them saying at Grossmann's.

I been on the road with the guy for a month, and I don't see where he's so goddamn unpleasant to be around.

Hell, I really like the man.

He's my friend.

Maybe it's just me. I gotta admit, when I go lookin' for a man, I mean really lookin' for a man, I look right past fake freaks with a joint in their pocket next to their dick who are only in it for dope and pussy, and I'm goin right for the big bastard in an old bomber jacket with an anchor tattooed on his arm and visible bullet scars on his body.

I never saw a lot in guys my own age unless they're genuine freaks like I am, and genuine freaks are hard to come by. That said, I'm not much for some fat old hardhat with a combover who goes to see "Joe" and jacks off in the back of the theatre, but you show me some hard-bitten, hard-living lone wolf of a tough guy whose been doing things his way or the highway since 1933, and you got me, pal.

And Logan's been on that beat for a few decades longer, so, yeah, I might be biased in that he's my type.

But, seriously I think what people got confused about Logan is that he's a real old-fashioned guy. I mean, the man was born in the late 1880's. He's not an animal, he's a man who learned what it was to be a man so long ago that the only thing most people know about the days when he was growing up they've learned from watching Westerns.

Now, unlike most of the people who are crawling around on this big rock hurtling through space, I don't think the world began the day I was born; I have a degree in history, and I know a little bit about such things that they don't put in the movies.

The prairies of Canada were every bit as wild as the American West, and let me tell you, things were a helluva lot closer to Clint Eastwood than to Randolph Scott.  
If you were an ordinary man, you had to be about ten times tougher than anybody walking around to say just to survive. Now, if you add in being a mutant, in times when mutants were about ten times as reviled as they are today, you had to be one hard-ass son of a bitch.

The other thing about Logan that gets him every time is his attitude towards women. Now, when he was a little boy, women, whether they were or not, were expected to be delicate flowers whom a breath would have withered. You can imagine some were and some weren't, and knocking around brawling saloons during the Gold Rush in the 1890's and 1900's, it's safe to say Logan probably met more of those who weren't, but that was the idea they put in his mind.

So, even though that kind of thinking is on it's way out the door, if it ever had any real basis in fact, anyway, but here's Logan, an old-fashioned guy from a time when men were men and when the lights were out and the corset was off, women were grateful for it, and here he is in this crazy shitstorm of lunacy as we sail into the final decades of the 20th century, surrounded by tractor trailers and bank computers and telephones in cars and A-bombs and drive-through donut shops and 24 hour porno peep shows and somebody he can't quite remember stuck a whole bunch of metal on his ass at the skeletal level and he's expected to put on a spandex costume and a funny hat and answer to the name of a small angry mammal and save the world.

The same world that hates and fears him, has always hated and feared him in the past, and will probably hate and fear him in the near future.

Wouldn't that make you a teensy bit anti-social?

I feel for the guy.

Me, I'm a freak, I was born a freak and an outcast and I never wanted to be or pretended to be anything else, but Logan, he could have been a regular guy.

He was happy as hell sitting in a bar, having a few beers, watching the goddamn Stanley Cup finals, just like all the other cats in the place, who don't have to put on a costume and go out and put their asses on the line for people who wish they were dead.

So he's a tough guy.

A real tough guy.

So he's a killer?

When and where he learned how to be a man, being a killer was expected.

Jesus, if I wanted sensitive, I'd go fuck a woman, you know?

Anyway, the worst thing about it is he's got a lousy track record with women. Some of this is because Logan really is the Don't Worry, Miss, I'll Save You kind of guy who gets mixed up with your usual damsel in distress who needs about as much help as a rattlesnake, and ends up getting his heart and his balls stomped all over by a parade of vicious castrating bitches who see him as a convenient person to pay their way and move the furniture, to whom they must occasionally submit to have a fuck thrown into them.

The other is that every time he finds a decent woman, his arch-enemy kills her.

I'm not sure what Vic's beef with Logan is, and I'm not sure he really is, either, Logan's memory being real spotty, but the fucker has basically killed every woman Logan ever gave a fuck about.

On his birthday.

Yeah, well, the buck stops here.

As the Old Man always says, wait until he gets a load of me.

* * *

**II: Logan**

If there was one day that Wolverine dreaded and hated, it was his birthday, and it wasn't because he had been born in the 1880's.

Or somewhere in there.

It had to do with Victor Creed's idea of a birthday present, which was to show up every year and put a massive hurting on him, and take the opportunity to slaughter or attempt to slaughter any woman who Logan might have been with.

In that he was laying low in the brush with Liv, he was hoping that Sabretooth wouldn't find him, but the son-of-a-bitch showed up nice and early and Wolverine got his pants on and left the tent in a hurry.

Even though he knew it wasn't any use pretending he was alone; you could smell Liv a mile away and her scent was literally all over him.

He sniffed the air, and sniffed again, and grinned.

"Oh, I know that smell, Jimmy. That's the smell of mad, bad and dangerous to know. You an' Red, huh? I guess while I'm doin' my tour, she's slummin'." Victor leered.

"Quit sniffin' the goddamn air and let's get this over with!" Logan snapped.

Sabretooth smiled, crookedly.

"Now, is that any way for you to talk to me when I use up half of my furlough from jungle hell to come to wish you a happy birthday, runt? Nice car."

Sabretooth put his hand on the hood and ran his claw slowly from the windshield down to the headlights.

The sound of a huge gash squealing into the polished metal was horrible, but not as horrible as the sound that came from the tent.

"_Hrrrrgh…Hrrrgh…Hrrrrgh…HRRRRAUUUUURGHHHHH_!"

It was the same kind of roaring sound Liv had made as she took her fighting stance in the bare knuckle fights, but not the same roar at all.

This time, she was going in for the kill.

"Fuck, Jimmy, tell me this is your fuckin' car." Sabretooth said.

He was beginning to look a little unhappy.

"I'm afraid it's Napalm's, Vic. Her main ride. Her pride and fuckin' joy." Logan replied.

"Oh, fuck." Sabretooth opined.

"You are in a world of shit, bub." Logan chuckled.

Then, he hit the dirt.

Victor Creed had only a moment to ponder his faux pas, and then a naked woman roaring and foaming at the mouth tore out of the tent with a gun in either hand, and the .45 caliber slugs began to tear through his body.

Logan was impressed at the amount of bullets Liv could fire in such a short time with such accuracy.

"VIC, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! THAT'S MY FUCKIN' CAR! THAT'S IT! I'M GONNA RIP YOUR FUCKIN HEART OUT!"

Unprepared for the assault of an obscene number of hollow-point .45 calibre bullets with full metal jackets tearing into his body, Victor Creed fell to his knees, or what was left of them after he took quite a few loads of hot lead in each of them.

Liv flexed her arms, roared again, and pulled a very sharp and highly polished machete out of the case she'd slung over her shoulder.

"You ready, baby?" she growled to Logan, who got up after the gunfire ceased.

"Darlin', I was born ready."

_SNIKT!_

They roared, together, and Liv slashed the machete across Sabretooth's chest at the same time that Logan buried his claws in his enemy's back, up to his knuckles.

In one fluid motion, Liv tossed the machete aside, and thrust her hand into Victor Creed's chest.

"Red, you crazy bitch!" Sabretooth howled in pain.

Her fingers brushed Logan's knuckles as he retracted his claws, and she put her tattooed fist around Sabretooth's wildly beating heart, and ripped it out of his chest.

After that, he just screamed.

Liv pulled out the gun that still had two bullets left in it, put it to Sabretooth's head and fired both slugs directly into his brain.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

He fell backward into the dirt, in a spreading pool of blood and gore.

Liv put her gun back in its holster, and looked wonderingly at what she had wrought as her rage left her.

She was covered in blood, Victor Creed was lying on the ground, twitching, a fairly unrecognizable sack of meat, and in her bloody hand she held his still weakly pulsing heart.

"Shit!" she marveled, having surprised herself.

Then, Liv held out her hand to Logan.

"Here youse go, Logan. Happy birthday!" she said, suddenly grinning.

The last thing Victor Creed saw before unconsciousness overtook him was Wolverine throwing his heart onto the ground and squashing it to a pulp with his bare foot.

"How's it feel, bub?" he asked.

Then, for Sabretooth, everything went black.

Liv looked at herself with disgust.

"Awww shit! Blood I can stand, but I hate it when I get fuckin' brains all over me! I gotta go take a bath."

"You go ahead, Liv. I'll stuff Creed in a few of those Hefty bags you got in the trunk."

"Why? He ain't dead."

"I know. But it'll take awhile for him to come back from that, though. I'll throw him in the trunk, we can drive a few miles down to that canyon we passed on the way here, chuck him in and move on down the road. That'll give him somethin' ta think about." Logan suggested.

"What if he follows us?"

"I'll pour gas on the road as we go. That'll confound his sniffer. Do you think you can drive across that like creek? Water will do the trick, too."

"Sure."

Wolverine packed Sabretooth packed into three garbage bags, locked him up in the trunk and started walking down to the creek.

He needed a bath, too.

The other unpleasant thing about his birthday was that Logan had little memory of who the people who gave him said holiday were.

He knew that his real name was Jim Howlett, and he knew he'd always insisted upon being called Logan, which was the name of his real father. Although Wolverine couldn't remember much else, like anybody named Howlett, and he had no memories of his mother, he remembered Dear Old Dad.

His memories may have been fuzzy but they weren't very warm.

There wasn't much in the way of warmth in "Black Tom" Logan, a mean-tempered, short, stocky bowlegged Black Irish drunk with greying black hair and angry blue eyes who made wild claims to have been born in the 1760's.

Black Tom was a poor man, and Logan's memories were of sitting inside or outside a small, unkempt cabin with the shabby groundskeeper and his rotgut whiskey, soaking up what grim and bitter wisdom the most likely very old man had to give his son.

He remembered fearing Black Tom, and being forbidden by someone ever to go near him, but he was somehow compelled to return.

A fact that never surprised Thomas Logan, who, in his way, loved his son.

"It's blood between us, boy. And bad blood, too. Up there in their bleedin' mansion, Soft John and the rest o' them sonsabitches can try to make you weak and soft like they are, but you never will be, because you're my son, and you'll be what I am. Blood rules out, in the end."

That was one pearl of the old man's wisdom Logan wished he could have forgotten.

But, Old Black Tom was somebody Logan couldn't forget. Not only was the man his father; he was the one who taught Logan how to survive, as a mutant, as an animal, and as a man.

Even in his most feral states, he could still hear Old Black Tom's words, echoing through his mind.

And, although he only had faint memories of what tragedy befell him after World War II, he remembered feeling utterly beaten and broken, a man with no place to go, and no one to go to.

No one but Old Black Tom.

It was then that he went to the crumbling old mansion on the edge of the wilds of British Columbia that triggered no memories in him, just a vague feeling of pain and unease.

There were some old pictures in the big house, and the only one that looked familiar was the one of a cleaned up Black Tom, that was in a woman's bedroom.

His mother's bedroom, probably.

It was a small picture, but the groundskeeper looked big as life and twice as mean, staring out at the son who'd grown up to look just like him with his usual hard-bitten and drunken bravado.

Logan kept that picture, he left the others, not sure which were of his mother or of the Mr. Howlett who had given him the name that even when he remembered who he was, he'd never felt like it was his.

He remembered standing there with his father's picture, looking around the room, at the dusty old bed where one of the young aristocratic ladies in the pictures he had seen had made him with the wily old Devil in the picture he held in his hands, and he felt a great and terrible sadness, an agony that made him not want to stay in that room anymore so he wouldn't remember anything else about it.

Wolverine was glad that Mel hadn't taken him for a sucker and that she had sent his knapsack home.

Black Tom's picture was in there.

Old Black Tom with his rotgut whiskey and his low evil chuckle, filled with a world-weary hate for everyone and everything in the world that had mistreated and abused and completely fucked over him and beat him down for about a hundred years.

You're my son, and you'll be what I am.

Blood rules out, in the end.

Loping through the brush, Logan tried to shake those thoughts from his mind.

As he got closer to the creek he stopped in the brush where he could just see Napalm kicking and splashing in the water.

She was laughing and singing to herself, having a grand old time.

He wasn't close enough that she could see him; Napalm had the eyesight of a half-blind mole, which was probably why she'd started listening up and sniffing the air to begin with.

Sure enough, she got quiet and stuck her head up out of the water and start twitching her nose.

"Logan?"

"Well, it ain't Sabretooth."

Wolverine sat down by the bank with the cake of soap Liv left there and scrubbed the bloodstains out of his new Levis, then he got into the water with the cake of soap to wash the blood and gore off himself.

Liv continued to splash around, and he swam over to her after he deposited the soap on the bank.

"How the hell did you shoot so well without your contacts in?" he wanted to know.

He was about eight inches from her nose before she could see him clearly.

That was plenty close enough for a certain part of him that was more interested than others to touch her.

Liv shrugged.

"I taught myself to shoot blind before I learned with my glasses on." She replied.

He was about to reach for her when she splashed off and stumbled up the bank.

"You can't catch me! I'm gone like a coooool breeze." she sang as she ran headlong into the brush.

"Hey! It's my birthday, darlin'! You can't run away from me!"

"You want it? You gotta catch it!"

Logan splashed out of the water with a grunt and took off after her.

Fresh from the creek, her scent was weak and the girl could run like a rabbit, but he caught up to her, anyway, and she was wet and breathless and laughing, squinting at him in the sunlight, smiling her thousand watt grin.

The sunlight came dappled through the heavy trees and the air was heavy with the rich smell of the fertile black earth; it almost overpowered everything.

Almost.

"Okay. You got me. You win."

Logan snarled at her before he kissed her, he had been in a weird state of animal lust since her fingers brushed almost tenderly between his claws against his knuckles inside his mortal enemy's chest cavity, and watching her splash naked in the creek and then chasing her through the woods had gotten his blood up even more.

His bad blood.

Maybe Ma and Pa didn't meet in that old bed, maybe they met out in the woods and made me on the ground, in the grass, beneath the trees, maybe that's why I'm the way I am.

"Feelin kinda _Wild Kingdom_ this mornin', Logan? Fine with me."

Liv dropped to all fours in the grass, arching her back and lowering her chest to the ground, sticking her ass in the air.

She turned her head towards him and growled back, her wet red hair falling all around her, inviting him to rut her with laughing lustful eyes.

Wolverine didn't need any further encouragement.

He knelt behind her and she pushed her legs open further, easing back against him, wet and ready, reaching and spreading her hands across the grass.

It released the rich, dark scent of the black earth beneath, which mixed with the equally wild, earthy smell of her arousal, completely filling his senses and crowding out any thoughts other than desire and instinct and lust.

He took her hard and fast in deep thrusts, with his hands on her hips, occasionally smacking her on the ass as she pushed back hard against him, crying out wordlessly, lashing both of them with her flying hair.

By the end she was bucking and grinding against him as he thrust into her wildly, both of them grunting and keening and tearing up the ground around them.

They fell together on their backs in a sweaty heap of tangled limbs on the grass, to catch their breath and soak up the sunshine.

They both felt a great sense of peace and quiet, having mated in the dirt and the grass and the mud, marking each other and their territory after spilling the blood of another predator who dared to infringe upon it.

"You know we're goin to Hell for this, you Wildcat." Logan commented.

"So what? If I went to the other place, I'd never see my father again, for all eternity. You think Vic will keep in the trunk for awahile? I'm sleepy."

"I'm sleepy, too. Sure, darlin', we got time for a little snooze." Logan answered.

While they slept, some of the other animals came cautiously out of their holes and burrows after being interrupted by these large, noisy creatures, sniffing the air at the familiar scent of some of the local apex predators.

The smaller animals gave a wide berth to where the two bigger animals lay, as they too went about their morning business.

* * *

After walking back to and breaking camp and dressing, Wolverine and the Harlequin got underway.

Liv kept looking at the map the Mountie had given them and suddenly pulled over, announcing, "Here we are!"

She and Logan were careful not to dirty their clothes as they lifted their bloody package out of out of the trunk.

"Cocksucker weighs a metric fucking ton." Liv complained.

"Swing him. Let's get a good head of steam goin'. One…two…Three!"

After Logan counted down, they tossed their cargo down the canyon and leaned over the wooden guard rail to watch his progress down.

The bags split open as Victor Creed bounced and rolled and crunched to the bottom where and he came to a rest, with his neck and at least two of his limbs at odd angles denoting breakage.

The hole in his chest was closing, and part of his skull had grown back, but the fall had given his body some new injuries to work on.

They looked down the canyon for awhile.

"Was it good for you too, Victor? No? Oh well. At least I had a good time." Liv jeered.

Wolverine lit a cigar.

"Yunno, darlin', a nice girl like you, I just don't know why you say you scare off all the men."

They went back to the car.

"You drive, Logan. It's your birthday. I'll cover the tracks. You're gonna keep going down this road for about ten miles, then hang a left, and pull into the first campground on the right. We got a spot reserved. It's a real nice place. Semi-private campsites, each with its own grill and electric hookups and water, three sets of showers, a pool, a snack-bar and a drive-in. Seems like a nice place for youse to have your birthday." She said, sunnily

She had her hair in those pigtails again, and her little toe was sticking out of one of the Keds on her feet she put up on the seat, and she didn't look the least bit lethal, at all.

Logan drove down the road for awhile, smoking and thinking.

He tried his very best to be horrified at Liv's brutality and unable to even entertain enjoying thoughts of a happy birthday, but, honestly, it did his heart good to stomp on Creed's and knowing that son of a bitch would be in agony at the bottom of a canyon for most of the day and likely laid up for a week while he was unscathed and Liv was alive and well and he was going to have the chance to have first happy birthday in half a century made Logan feel pretty damn good.

He had a few nagging questions as to how Sabretooth and Napalm came to be on familiar terms as Vic and Red, but he put them out of his mind.

"You know, I only remember one birthday from when I was a kid. I remember I was sick as a dog. Hay fever or somethin', an' I was s'posed to stay in bed, but I got up and snuck out to go see my father. Ol' Black Tom. He was sittin' outside his cabin, drunk in the middle of the day, with his jug on one side and a bag of rocks on the other side of him to throw at the rabbits that tried to invade his sorry patch of vegetables. I was coughin' and sneezin' somethin' awful, and I went and sat beside him, and he looked at me and said "You're ten, today, ain't you, Jimmy?" And I told him I was, and he let me have a few drinks of his cheap dirty home-made whiskey. Said it would stop me sneezin'. It did, because I passed right out. When I woke up I was in the cabin and he gave me a cup of the worst coffee I ever tasted and a cheap pocketknife and sent me on my way, after it quit rainin'. I still got the pocketknife. That was how it was, with Ol' Black Tom. "

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I can't remember my mother, either. Still, why do you think you remember your father, and not your mother?"

"I can't forget Black Tom. Every time I look in the mirror, there he is. An' he taught me everything I know about bein' what I am. What he is, too. You can't forget that. You ever worry that someday you'll turn into the same kind of evil son-of-a-bitch your father is?"

"Just about every day. But my Dad, he's never been bad to me. You remember if your father was good to you?"

"He tried to be. In his way. But Black Tom was a bitter, crazy old drink and he was no real good to anybody, especially not himself. You know, Victor tries to tell me Black Tom was his father, too. But unless his mother was a passing six foot tall German or Swede Amazon whose idea of heaven was a short, mean, bowlegged drunken Irishman, I think he's fulla shit."

"Well, he won't be layin' that trip on you this year." Liv commented.

"Did you plan this, Wildcat? All of it?"

"You got me there. I figured Creed would come skulking around. And I figured you and me together could make mincemeat outa him. And I found this campsite close to a canyon we could toss Sabretooth down on the Mounties' map. I didn't plan on getting quite that goddamn mad, though. I mean, that was some kinds fuckin' overkill. And I didn't do it just because he scratched my car. After what that asshole's done to you, fuck him. He deserved it, the cocksucker. Shit, I know you always get a raw deal on your birthday, so's I just wanted to make sure you had a good one, for once." Liv admitted.

"Wildcat, that's the best birthday present I've had in fifty years."

"Aw, hell, Logan, what are friends for? You're the first man I've ever had who's stuck around long enough and given enough of a flying fuck at a rolling donut about me to really be my friend, and treat me, well, decently, even though I am a drunk and a killer and a little Irish mutt from Brooklyn. Besides, I want you to know that I'm in this for the long haul, that when I'm your friend I'm your goddamn friend and even after every motherfucker on God's Green Earth has turned their back on you, I'll still walk ten miles barefoot over broken glass to come to your side. Anybody who fucks with you, anybody who hurts you, anybody who crosses you, Logan, I'll do to them what I did to Victor Creed, or I'll die trying."

Sometimes a little kindness and a little tenderness goes a long way.

"Wildcat, if anybody ever tries to kill you when I'm around I'll make what you did to Sabretooth look like a kiss." Logan declared.

"Thanks, Logan."

"What are friends for?"

"Hey, you got somethin' on your mind?"

"Same thing I had all day. My father."

"You wanna tell me about it?"

"I can't."

"I won't tell a soul. I'll prove it to ya. We'll swear ourselves in blood. Cut me."

Liv held out her arm, and Logan pulled over.

"Wuddya mean, swear in blood?"

"C'mon, you know how this works. You cut me, I cut you, we rub our arms together and we swear by our blood. Our friendship begins with our blood, and if one of us ever betrays the other, then it ends the same way."

Logan looked at her for a long minute.

He popped one claw and cut Liv's arm a little, then his own.

They hurriedly sealed their pact before his arm could heal.

"I swear, by my blood, and on my honour as long as I live, I will never deceive you. I will never betray you. I will be loyal and true and always your friend." Liv said, simply.

That was a pretty good oath.

Logan wondered where she learned it.

"I swear, by my blood, and on my honour as long as I live, I will never deceive you. I will never betray you. I will be loyal and true and always your friend." he responded.

Logan pulled back out onto the road.

"Jesus, I ain't done that since I was a little kid. How about you, Napalm?"

"I was eight. So was Joe Mac. We've held to it. Blood or no blood, you can trust me, Logan."

"Okay. You know how I made it sound like I just went cold turkey on whatever Mel was doing to my mind with her powers and it didn't bother me?"

"You lied?"

"Yeah. Big time. I went completely fuckin' nuts. You have no idea."

"I might. I went cold turkey on jacks a coupla times."

"What?"

"Pharmaceutical heroin. I been hurt bad, Logan. When they think you ain't gonna make it, they give youse the good stuff."

"Maybe ya do, then. Kinda. I tried ta kill myself. I couldn't help it. I can't explain it. That's' just what Mel does to ya. She don't mean too, but when she leaves a man, holy shit. I walked in front of a car, I jumped offa roof, I ripped my own guts out. I tried ta saw my head off but I passed out before I could do it. And, in that I couldn't kill myself, I just went crazy. I don't know what the fuck I did, but somewhere in my brains, something told me to go home. I ended up at Pa's old homestead, near the Howlett place, drunk, naked and raving like a lunatic. Waiting it out for whatever it was to wear off of me. I had enough presence of mind to get booze, which kept my mind kinda at ease, but I didn't eat and I couldn't sleep. I don't know what woulda happened to me if it wasn't for him."

"Who?"

"You remember you said a guy like me might live a thousand years? Black Tom didn't have no trouble making it to about two hundred and some."

"Jesus, Logan!"

"Not exactly. He still lives in the cabin. Does odd jobs, sometimes goes up to the logging camp, sometimes he lives off the land. But he's still there. I'm telling ya, he don't look much different. Just a little greyer than I remember. I thought I was dyin', seeing things, lyin' there on the floor, out of my head like I was. I went out and when I got up I was in the cabin. And there was Ol' Black Tom. With more of his horrible coffee and his rotgut whiskey and his venison stew, but that was what I needed. Somebody to look after me until whatever Mel did to my head wore off. I got better and went on my way. He was there the last time I needed a place to go, after the Big One, too. The Old Man told me I ought never to come down off the mountain, again. I can't remember why I did, now, but sometimes, I can't help but think he was right. He's still there. That tough old sunnuvabitch will be there in another hundred years. I dunno, Wildcat. When you got noplace else to go…"

Wolverine let his voice trail off.

He wasn't sure if she'd understand, but she did.

"…ya gotta go home. My Dad lives in a bunker on the waterfront in Brooklyn. Under the goddamn river, yunno? I grew up there. He still keeps my old bedroom for me. It's a real nice place he's got. There's a soundproof room another layer down where I suppose he's killed more people than cancer. But at the other end there's the bedroom I grew up in, an' the kitchen where the Old Man taught me how to cook, where my Ma and him and me usedta sit an' eat before she died. Then there's the living room where we watched TV and all the rest of it, yunno? It ain't the Joker's house of horrors to me. There were times I was so low-down and beat up or just completely screwed that I was ashamed to go to Bruce. So if I knew Dad was on the outside, I went home. I knew I could count on the Old Man, not just to look after me, but to really understand. Sometimes, I go just because I wanna go be with my Dad. He's my father. I love him. Fuck anybody who wants me to feel otherwise. It ain't a crime, Logan. He's your father."

Logan took the turnoff to the campsite.

"You're a helluva broad, you know that, Liv?"

She just shrugged.

"Hey, enough of this heavy family shit. It's your birthday. Let's you and me have a good time. Alright?"

Smiling that thousand watt grin, again.

"I been havin' a good time, Wildcat."

"Good. Here's our turnoff."


	4. Napalm and Wolverine REVISED AND UPDATED

**IV: Napalm and Wolverine**

**Howlett, British Columbia, 1970**

**I: Logan**

Being so close to the old mansion where he'd been born and raised that the town bore the same name as he did had an effect on Logan that wasn't altogether melancholy.

He knew, of course that he and Liv were going backward before they went forward; she had some debts to pay in the small town of Howlett, British Columbia, where she had livened things up in the sleepy logging town presided over by an old crumbling haunted mansion in the hills by crashing into the town's only bar in the early morning hours with a .45 calibre hole in her chest and a big howling dog at her side.

As for the town of Howlett, Logan had some shaky but positive memories of living in there, for awhile, after the Big One, and any memories, let alone positive ones were hard for Logan to come by.

He had worked as a logger and he'd come back, here and there, over the past thirty years to that old life, and to the old homestead, when what his father called "the world of men and men's things" became too much for him.

He had dreams he never spoke of to anyone of, for his old hometown.

A little place out in the woods, a little further up the mountain than Pa's homestead.

A home of his own, nestled in the mountains close by the logging camp.

Settling down there with his lovely young wife, Jean Grey.

Was it so bad for him to want to have a nice, quiet retirement in the mountains from which he had sprung?

Logan knew it was a pipedream, but that didn't stop him from building his picturesque cabin in the mountains, even if he knew he was going to be the only one who ever went there.

No one knew about the place any more than they knew about his dreams for it, but thinking of it, he got a funny tingle in his arm where he'd let Liv's bad blood mingle with his own.

Liv was a killer, a savage, an animal.

The intellectual part of her big jumped-up brain was too much for her to handle and the irrational part was too frightening, so she lived outside both of them, by a strange combination of reason and instinct, and a code of wild outlaw honour that she discovered in a dusty old book that no one had sworn by since he was taught it at his father's knee when it flourished all over the North American West.

She knew damn well that the bonds of blood were the strongest bonds of all under that code; his blood flowed in her veins and her blood in his, and even if they had to satisfy the condition of their oath that the reparation for betrayal was death; it would not sever the bond.

Strange to meet one of your own kind after so many years, strange she was so young, strange she was, indeed compared to most of the boys and girls her age.

He rubbed his arm where it tingled, thinking about their hands touching inside Sabretooth's violated chest; it all meant something, something to do with blood and honour and savagery and humanity; but he couldn't puzzle it all out at once.

"Darlin', you think this baby can go alright on an ol' dirt road?" he asked her.

"Yeah. Sure. Why?"

"There's one comin' through the brush, right here. Just keep on it. It's gonna wind up the mountain for awahile, but at the end of it, there's a place we can stay."

She didn't ask him any questions about the cabin in the middle of the tall trees, and parked the Wildcat next to a dark green 1947 Ford half-ton pickup truck.

"This your truck, Logan? It's a real beauty. '47, right?"

"Yeah. It quit runnin' on me a coupla years ago, though. Leaks oil and water."

"Oh yeah? I bet I can fix that. If you didn't crack the head, I won't even need to take it to a garage. Pop the hood for me, willya? Get in and start her up."

It took Logan a few tries, but the old truck eventually roared to life.

Liv pulled up a big rock, stood on it, and peered under the hood.

"Battery needs charging. Try the brakes. Yeah, I'll have to do an adjustment. Drain the fluids, change the oil, and the plugs. I don't have to take the engine out because I think I can fix the head rthe way is is…maybe…now what do I need…lemme crawl under here and…yeah, those brakes are shot…"

Liv finished her once-over on the car.

"No problem. Kid stuff. I just gotta go into town, buy a few things, I can fix 'er up right here. And when I get done with that engine, shit, you'll have the fastest truck in the Great White North. Just like new."

Liv went and got her tools and a pair of coveralls out of the trunk of her car and started braiding her hair.

"You gotta jack?"

"In the back of the truck."

"Good. Nice place you got here."

"I built it. You're the first person I ever brought up here, Liv."

"Really? Shit. Look, my lips are sealed. But I gotta get this truck workin' for ya. I'll be right back."

Liv came back from town with a lot of work to do.

She said she'd be a few hours working on the truck, and informed him that the best place for anyone to be while she was working on a head gasket was at least a mile away from where they could get hit by flying tools, so Logan went into town to buy some things at the store, and to stop by the bar to make a couple phone calls, check in with Charlie, that kind of thing.

He could have taken her car, but he decided to walk, instead; it was a good day for a walk and he wanted to give Liv plenty of time to swear, curse, throw things, scream and fix the car.

He went to the bar and the usual guys were there, a few years older but otherwise pretty much the same, and they were all glad to see him.

Bill didn't mind him using the phone in the back room, and he sat down on a keg and dialled up the X-Mansion.

One of the advantages of being one of the world's most powerful telepaths is that you don't have to wonder who's on the phone.

"How bad was it this year? Is Napalm dead? She had better not be dead, Logan. Everything I said about her, I meant, but she's my friend. You better not have let him kill her."

"Hello to you to, Jeannie. Yeah, it was bad. Bad for Sabretooth. She shot him about thirty times, and sliced his chest open with an adamantium machete, just as I was comin' round from the back, rippin out a lung or a kidney or two. Then she put her little hand with the skull and crossbones tattooed on it right in his chest, gave my hand a friendly squeeze, and tore Creed's beating heart right out of his chest. She looked at it, beatin' an' looked at me, and handed it to me an' said, Happy Birthday." Logan explained.

"What did you do?"

"I kinda wondered about him callin' her "Red" and her callin' him "Vic". There's somethin' more to it, I think."

Jean was almost sure he was going to say that he took a big bite out of it at Liv ate the rest.

"That's not what I mean, Logan! What did you do after she…handed you his…his…"

"What he's done to me about a thousand times. I stomped all over his heart. Then Liv blew his brains out and we put him in a coupla trash bags and tossed him down a canyon. I had a pretty nice birthday. Went to the drive-in. Saw _Alice in Wonderland_ an' _Fantasia_ with a buncha hippies at this campsite. There was so much reefer in th' air I ended up high as a kite, myself. I could tellya about the rest, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to hear."

"You're right. Are you ever coming back, Logan?"

"When school starts. Why? You miss me, Red?"

"Does everything have to be about sex with you?"

"No. I like beer, an' I'm partial to havin' two or three meals a day, when I can get 'em, too. An' I do enjoy a good book. How's Mel?"

"That dumb whore? Here, Professor. You talk to him."

Logan was still laughing when Charles Xavier took over the line as Jean stalked out of his office.

"Logan, that wasn't very nice."

"I know. But I can't help it. Doesn't take much to get Jeannie mad, an' I can't resist goadin' her. Seriously, though, how is Mel?"

"I'll transfer you to her room when we're done talking and you can find out. I heard about your adventure with Sabretooth. Was that…necessary?"

"From where I'm standin' it was. But I get what you were tryin' to tell me about the Wildcat. She's a real killer. And yours truly has just became her blood brother, so I guess my taste in women and friends isn't improving."

"Don't sell yourself or Liv short. Where are you now?"

"Howlett. We came back so Liv could pay the vet who fixed her shoulder and pick up her dog. I'm going to try and get her to go to a real doctor and get checked out, and then we're really going to start to make tracks for Ontario."

"Have you seen the groundskeeper?"

"You mean my Pa? Not yet."

_I smelled him, though. He's been up at my place. I guess he looks after it, too. Sure he does. There's never any trash around, any animals moving in. _

_ Can't tell Charlie. _

_ He don't even know I got a place._

"Logan, you don't know for sure that Thomas Logan was your father, or that he's still alive."

_Gotcha double on that one, Charlie.  
_ "He's alive. I know. He's still up on the hill, the old bastard. Anyway, I'm lookin' forward to seein' some of the guys I used to work with in town. If I know them, they got somebody for me to fight. Probably someone for Liv to fight, too."

"Don't let her kill anyone."

"I'll try, Charlie, but I don't think I can promise you, anything." Logan chuckled.

Professor Xavier frowned.

Logan still wasn't taking the Harlequin seriously.

The Troubles would show him, otherwise.

He was going to say more, but he realised Logan had some unfinished business with Melanie, and, considering that, he wouldn't be listening, anyway.

"Well, I have a summer class to teach, so I must go. Would you still like me to transfer you to Femme Fatale' s room?"

"That's Mel's handle she picked? It fits. Charlie, do yourself a favour. Don't even think you can handle her powers."

"I believe I told you that. How bad was it?"

"Worse. I tried to saw my own head off with my claws. Good thing I passed out before I could finish. Don't tell Mel that, though."

"I won't. Good bye, Logan. I hope to hear from you again, soon."

"Seeya, Charlie."

Logan switched his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, nervously.

"Hello?"

He didn't say anything.

"Hello?"

"Hiya, Mel. How ya doin'?"

"Logan? Logan! You're still speaking to me?"

"Sure I am. Charlie told me the whole story. I know ya weren't tryin' ta double cross me. You gonna be there when I get back?"

"Yeah, but I hear you got pretty tight with the Harlequin."

"So?"

"Really? Look man, I've got my powers almost completely under control. So it won't fuck up your mind forever for you to touch me. If that's cool with the Harlequin. I don't want her to kill me."

Logan was about to tell her that it was blood between him and Napalm, blood and unbreakable bonds of friendship and a common understanding as two mad dog killers tempered only by their code of honor, and that romance had nothing to do with it, but that wouldn't make Mel feel any better.

Even with her powers under control, he was the only man in the world who could make love to her and not shoot himself in the head a few minutes after.

If she thought he wasn't interested anymore, she might shoot herself in the head.

And besides, he liked Mel, and he really wasn't mad at her, at all.

"She won't mind." Logan replied, simply.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"That's cool. So, uh, when are you coming back?"

The tone of her voice made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he felt his balls tighten up.

Jesus, when the fuck did I become James Bond?

Logan wasn't used to having pretty young women chase after him like this. But that's' the way it seemed to be. Sometimes a man can't get a girl to even look at him, and then, all the sudden, they're all over you at once.

That was another good thing about these crazy little girls; they didn't give a shit what you did and who you did it with when you weren't with them.

It was going to take Logan some getting used to, these modern woman, they were every bit as crazy, maybe wilder than their grandmothers had been in the Roaring Twenties, but being the man he was and having two pretty young girls on his social calendar, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"You miss me, Mel?"

"Well, yeah! I mean you're my old man, right? Why the fuck wouldn't I miss you?"

"Your ol' man? huh. Guess that makes you my ol' lady."

"If that's cool with you."

Logan laughed.

"Christ, Mel, ya make it sound like I got a whole buncha women beatin' down my door and I got no time for you. Sure it's alright with me. When I found out you didn't double cross me, I was glad. Shit, I can't figure out what you want with an ol' canucklehead like me, anyway? Other than you got no choice."

"Hey, man, don't say shit like that to me! I don't just want you to come back because I can't get anybody else to fuck me. I mean it's not like I'd actually kill' em. At least I don't think so. I really dig you. I mean, you're a real man. An' my real friend."

"Yeah. Real mean, real ugly, real hairy and real short."

"I don't give a fuck about you being short. You know the kinds guys I've met, on the road since I was 13? Fuck, some of 'em, they deserved what they got. And you're not ugly like, oh man, that dude should put a bag over his head. You're just not pretty. Shit, men aren't s'posed to be pretty. So, when are you coming home?  
"In a coupla months."

"Months! What am I gonna do for a coupla months! Fuck!"

Logan found himself laughing again.

This must be what it's like to be Tony Stark.

"Take long walks and cold showers?"

"Yeah, right. Fuck that noise. Oh well. It's better than years. Umm, so, you wouldn't happen to be alone, now, would you? Cause I'm up here in my bed, an all I got on is my panties and it's, like, gettin' really hot in here, man…"

This is _definitely_ what it's like to be Tony Stark.

No sense wasting the opportunity.

Logan got up and locked the door.

"Oh yeah? Tell me more."

When Logan got back, he noticed Liv wasn't in the truck or up on the porch.

She wasn't in the kitchen when he put the food in the fridge and found the generator was working fine, it was cold.

He walked into the main room, and she wasn't in there, either, but the bottom of the tub in the can was still wet, and there was a black ring around it and a pair of dirty coveralls wadded up in the corner.

It was a small place, there was only one room left.

Logan opened the bedroom door.

There she was, naked as the day she was born, spread all out over the quilt on the bed pretty as a picture.

A dirty picture.

"Well helllloooo, sailor! Your truck's all good as new. Purrs like a big kitty. Now, it's time for you to pay me." She announced.

He took off his shirt and unbuckled his belt.

"I dunno, darlin'. I'm all sweaty from walkin' around all day long, an' I'm sure I don't smell too good." He chuckled.

"You're only gonna get sweatier. An' you smell good to me. You wanna take those pants off, chief, or do I have to get rough?"

It sure was a good couple of decades to be a man.

**II: Liv**

I wasn't too surprised that the local yokels at Howlett's one and only bar had arranged a bare-knuckle cage match for me; I was pretty famous in the area for being able to kick anybody's ass.

It was when they told me who they wanted me to fight that I was more than a little surprised.

So was Logan.

He objected, violently, grabbing Bill, the bar owner by his shirt and pulling him down to our level.

"Are you out of your fuckin' mind, bub? You think I'm gonna fight my friend, here with these?"

_Snikt!_

"Calm down, Logan. Don't go callin' me "bub" the way you do before you'tre about to knock the shit outa somebody, eh? You don't have to hurt each other. Hell, everybody knows whoever we put in that cage with your girl Napalm, here is gonna get their ass handed to them, and the same goes for you. Nobody's gonna bet on that. You can do it like wrestling. Whoever gets a fall, and stays down for a count of ten loses. Nobody said the two of you had to rip each other to pieces."

"Bullshit! I spent the evening doin' the only kind of wrestling I'm goin' to with the Wildcat, an' my plans for the night include more of the same, not some kinda fight."

I wasn't quite so opposed.

I mean, I was at the beginning of my superhero career, here, only 22 years old and trying to make a name for myself, and how often do you get the chance to prove you can hold your own against the Wolverine?

And if I got a little clawed, and took a punch or two, so what? It's not like I never had a shiner or tasted a little metal.

Wounds heal.

Shit wipes off, yunno?

"I want a hundred bucks just for getting in the cage. A hundred bucks for Logan, too. I won't take any less that double or nothin' on Logan to win and triple or nothin' on me. Then I'll do it." I agreed.

"Are you fuckin' crazy?" Logan asked me.

That was a stupid fuckin' question.

"As a shithouse rat. C'mon, it'll be fun." I said.

Fun.

Some fuckin' fun.

I'd like to say that was the booze talking, but I was about as close to sober as I get when Bill made us the proposition, I just am fucking crazy as a shithouse rat.

Runs in the family, right?

Well, I may be crazy bit I'm not stupid, and I started to think maybe I was fulla shit when they put us both in the cage, me in my shorts and undershirt and my dog tags, Logan in just his shorts and his dog tags.

Then the crowd started screaming for blood.

This would be bad.

I see my blood, I go nuts.

Logan sees his blood, he goes nuts.

All that bravado I was feeling while I was having a drink and patting myself on the back I could take a punch and a slice or two had left me, and I felt sober as a priest on a Sunday morning.

It wasn't worth the money, or anything else.

We started dancing around each other.

"Logan, I'm fucked. I never fought anybody for fake, before."

"You never spar?"

"Sure. Alla time. But these yobs don't want sparring."

"Relax, kid. I teach combat. I do this shit all the time. Follow my lead. Just keep on the defensive, keep blocking whatever I throw at you, and trust me, I can stop the claws about a centimetre from you. Okay?"

"Well, who wins, then?"

"I don't know. This was your big idea."

Logan rushed me with everything he had; I could feel the air whistling by my head as his fist almost connected with my face.

He trusted me to be good enough to get out of the way of it and I was, and we danced around like that for awhile, taking shots at each other and blocking them.

The natives were getting restless.

They wanted to see some real action.

I was stuck.

You can't bring down somebody who's short and stocky with a head butt, and I wasn't about to resort to a shot in the balls, and I knew he wasn't going to fall for a leg sweep.

We got into what looked like a fighting clinch.

My heart was hammering in my chest, and I know I smelled like fear and nerves and fight; I was about ready to just hit him some kind of low blow and bust out of that cage.

"Keep it together, Liv." Logan told me.

"I'm trying. They aren't happy."

"I know. And I'm not punching you."

"Go ahead. I can take it. Anything's better than this shit."

"I'm not punching you, goddamit!"

"Then it's time for claws."

"Liv, you're good, you know fightin', but you never…"

"I wanna see just how good I am. And if you don't give these people claws, things are gonna get rough in here, and then you will have to give them claws, right up their asses so we can get outa this dump in one fuckin' piece. "

_Snikt!_

Now I saw those claws a million times if I saw them once. Logan doesn't use them just to kill with, they come in handy for a lot of little jobs. Like having your own built-in Swiss Army knife. They never bothered me.

But when I saw those claws, and Logan in his fighting stance, I couldn't help it, I started to get scared, that kind of scared even people like me who aren't scared of much get, that knee-jerk instinctive feeling of mortal terror every living creature instinctually gets when it knows its being threatened with death. And when I'm fighting and I get scared for my life, I also get mad, real mad. And when rage meets mortal terror and they pick up cold, brutal and calculating along the way, you get Napalm.

And Napalm burns everything down.

Logan could smell trouble.

Big trouble.

"Don't lose it on me, Wildcat."

If I got hostile enough, he'd get hostile too, and then?

Then I wished I had told Bill to shove his cage match.

We were both antsy and edgy, using all the will we had not to go berserk.

"I'm gonna rush you. Take evasive action." He told me

Logan rushed me.

I saw those claws coming at me and something snapped inside my brain.

I went into a roll and got behind him, up on his neck.

I was pretty sure Logan wasn't going to claw me, and even if he did, even if he clawed me right into my fucking bones and out the other side, the only way I was getting off his back, or my arm was getting off his neck was if he went down.

"Get off me! I'll throw you!" he yelled.

"Throw me, then!"

He threw me.

Yeah, it hurt, but I'm sure having me all over his windpipe wasn't making him feel too good, either.

Still had the claws out.

I got up in a hurry.

"What the fuck was that?" he snarled.

"Don't rush me with those claws, again! I can't keep my cool when you do that."

People were cheering, now.

Logan was mad, and I was mad too, we both of us had blood in our eyes, and that was no good at all.

"Stay the fuck off my neck! You know how close I came to rippin' your arm up?"

"Then put those fuckin' claws away!"

I had a knife strapped to the inside of my thigh, and I was thinking about getting it.

We were eye to eye, mad and frustrated and snarling, and both of us were about to get hurt.

The only difference was Logan would be all better in a few minutes.

"One of us hasta take a dive." He said.

"I know that."

"I never take a dive."

"Me neither."

"Fuck! This is why I didn't want to do this, I knew how it was gonna end up. Bloody and bad!"

Then, I had an idea.

Like the Old Man always told me, if you can't win fair and square, cheat, as long as you can get away with it.

"Logan, I wanna tell you in advance, I'm real sorry about this, but, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

I put my hand inside his shorts, and not in an unfriendly way.

That confused the shit out of him, and his claws retracted and he just looked at me like I was right out of my fucking mind.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked.

"They one of us had to be on the floor for ten seconds for the match to end. That was all they said."

He was so surprised I had my hands in the cookie jar you could have knocked him over with a feather, so I did knock him over and then I jumped on top of him.

As far as I was concerned, if these rubes wanted a show they were going to get it, and better fighting than fucking because fucking wasn't going to get either of us hurt.

Logan rolled me over, and then I rolled him over and we got to rolling each other over so after he tried to count to ten two or three times the bar owner drew the curtain over the cage and made everybody leave the room.

"Darlin', it don't say much good about you that fightin' me got you this turned on." Logan chuckled.

"Aww, we was never fightin' for real. If we was, that would be different."

We may not have been fighting for real, but as soon as the room was empty and the curtains went around the cage, Logan had his cock out and my underwear off and I got say it was a better way to end my big idea than the alternative.

We got dressed and came out about a little later, thinking we might have to fight the whole crowd, but they were all pretty drunk and jolly and they laughed and cheered for us and poured beer on our heads and hooted.

"I shoulda known what would happen if I put you two animals in a cage together." Bill said.

"So, was that a draw?" Logan asked.

"I s'pose it was." I said.

I gave the man back the hundred dollars and so did Logan and we agreed all bets were off.

Everybody was so happy we didn't collect they kept buying, and me and Logan kept drinking and he had to carry me out the door.

The next thing I knew it was morning and I was tucked up in that old fashioned brass bed under the old-fashioned quilt with Logan, in his old-fashioned cabin in the mountains, so the night turned out better than it seemed it would.

But, I am fucking crazy.

I swear to God I am.

**II: Logan**

After Wolverine put his travelling partner to bed, he wasn't tired, so he went out on his porch.

To think.

It had been a long time since he could get his mind right.

Too much time worrying about other people's women.

Hell, even Liv was somebody else's woman, the Bat was going to deliver her unto Eddie, but Logan and Eddie went back a long time, he didn't think he'd object to them staying friends.

Liv wasn't the problem.

She'd saved his ass.

Hell, even Mel wasn't the problem.

He asked her to let him have it, and Mel was waiting for him, in New York.

So, she was his old lady, now, that was something Logan didn't object to.

The problem was Jeannie.

He let her get to him, and there was nothing, nothing worse in the world than letting a woman who didn't belong to you that you would never have get to you.

That was when he had a funny thought.

Liv seemed to like Howlett well enough, she seemed to like BC well enough, and she seemed to like him well enough.

Maybe they could stay.

The more Logan thought about it, the better it sounded.

He built his little dreamhouse for two for himself and a red-haired superhero to retire to live the simple life, why not do it?

Just what was waiting for him in New York?

A spandex costume and another lifetime or two of protecting and defending people who hated and feared him?

And what about Liv?

More knife scars and bullet wounds and black eyes and drunken blackouts, until she bled out in a dirty street somewhere, alone and in pain, surrounded by papers and trash.

And for what?

Wouldn't she be better off, wouldn't they be better off in his little cabin in the mountains? He could go work at the logging camp, and Liv could get a job at the university; it wasn't that far away.

They could have a nice, quiet, normal life.

One thing Eddie could never give her, one thing Bruce could never give her, one thing Jack Napier could never give her.

Something he could give her, and if it wasn't exactly love, there was blood between them, wasn't that enough?

Sure she'd still want to go to Toronto and get the son-of-a-bitch who shot her, but after that, what was to stop them from coming back to Howlett?

If anything, Bruce would probably be relieved, and as for Charlie, he had a whole school full of mutants to help him save the world.

Logan got up off the porch and went back to bed, where Liv was still sleeping.

It was a helluva long shot, but, you never know until you try.

**London, England, later that month, Brotherhood of Mutants Headquarters**

**I:Erik**

Jack was so right, when you are a supervillain, good help is very hard to find.

Magneto could count the number of truly intelligent and useful members of his Brotherhood without taking off both of his gloves, and Victor Creed was not among them.

Mystique came first to his mind.

Raven was such a wonderful woman. She had beauty, brains and cunning, a rare trifecta in any woman, indeed, in any person.

Of course, most men found her to be a cruel, devious, heartless, self-serving evil sociopathic nymphomaniac, but he considered those to be good points rather than bad.

As far Victor, he had never been anything more than a poor substitute for Logan, who had gone over to Charles' side when given the opportunity.

Not that Erik really blamed him.

Logan wasn't the drunken skirt-chasing, bad-tempered fool people saw him as.

He was a very shrewd and intelligent little man, who had, in his long life learned the lesson that he had to look after himself because nobody else was going to do it for him. The X-Men had at least the partial support of the US government, and, as such, Charles had better facilities and he could offer the mutants under his aegis a greater degree of safety and security, not to mention steady work, a steady paycheck and a very nice place to live.

Combine that with a steady supply of nubile young girls wanting to know if Mr. Logan could show them a certain combat move, and only a fool would turn down an offer like that so that he could remain loyal to an organisation labelled a terrorist group that could never stay in one place for any length of time that represented a feared and hated race.

Victor Creed was just such a fool, and Magneto did not suffer him gladly, so he was almost relieved when the idiot failed to return promptly from his birthday rendezvous with Wolverine.

He made inquiries as to whether Sgt. Mjr. Creed had returned to Vietnam early from his furlough, and found out he had not.

Perhaps Logan had finally devised a method to kill the big dumb bastard.

But no, Creed returned to New York, but with an amusing story that Magneto, who was the Vice-President of the Society of Supervillains, would tell Jack Napier over brandy and cigars, and then to the Society's whole Presidium Council (Lex Luthor, the Green Goblin, Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, the Penguin, Loki, and Braniac) much to their mutual amusement.

"Victor, I had almost given you up for dead. I must say, you don't look well."

"I'm not. Did you know the runt was running with Red?"

"Red?"

"Yeah. Red. Y'know, Napalm."

"Oh, you mean Jack's daughter, Trivelino. The Harlequin. Victor, I will not stand for you referring to the Harlequin by that crude nickname. She's a brilliant young woman. She's a bit high-spirited and a little wild, but she has the makings of an excellent mask, if she survives her adolescence. Jack tells me that she and Logan have become quite friendly, so I take it your meeting with her did not go well."

"It never does. At least not in the end. But this time was the worst. She fired a whole clip of hollow point bullets with full metal jackets into my hide from two .45 autos. That was before she sliced my chest open with a machete at the same time as the runt sunk his claws into my lungs from the back. But she wasn't done until she put her hand in the big hole she made in my chest and ripped my heart out. She told the runt happy birthday and handed it to him. When I protested, she shot me twice in the head and the last thing I remember seeing was her laughing while the runt ground my heart under his heel. I woke up at the bottom of a canyon with my neck and almost every other bone in my body broken to boot, and considering the pieces of it were all around me, I figure they stuffed me in a few Hefty bags and tossed me out of the car and over the guard rail." Sabretooth confirmed.

Magneto suppressed a laugh.

"You do realise that you can't mount any kind of reprisal."

"What?"

"Revenge, Victor. No revenge on your President's daughter."

"Revenge? I ain't lookin' for revenge. She didn't kill me, did she? Did I mention she was completely naked at the time? And I'm not callin' her Red for the hell of it, she's a real redhead, one of the few real redheads I ever met that wasn't ugly as sin. What the fuck is a woman like that doing with the runt? I mean, it takes a lot for a frail to impress me, but this time Red's done it. I'm fuckin' impressed. I mean here's an alpha bitch a guy like me could really learn to like. You could have a good time with a girl like her. You think Jack would get mad if I made a serious play for her once she gets back to New York?"

"You want to see Trivelino on a regular basis, Victor?"

"Hell yeah! What a woman. She's got a heart as black as midnight in a coal mine. My kind of girl."

"What did you do to her that made her so furious?"

"I scratched up her car. I didn't know it was hers. I thought it was Jimmy's. And she didn't gimme time to explain. I'm tellin' you, Erik, I think I got it figured out. All I gotta do if I want Red to stop rippin' me to pieces is lay the fuck offa her cars."

It was the last part of the story that got the Council rolling in the aisles.

And no one laughed harder than the Joker.

The story began to circulate not only amongst supervillains, but amongst superheroes, and at his next futile meeting in search of rapprochement with Charles, the Professor asked Magneto if the story was true.

"I doubt that Victor has the intelligence to make something like that up, Charles. How fortunate you all are that she's on your side."

"Fortunate is not the word I was thinking of, Erik."

"Now, now, Charles, you know how difficult the adolescent years can be. Especially for a person of genius who has madness in equal parts. With proper supervision by an established mask., a little time in a world-class rehab facility, and her passage into the calmer waters of her mid-twenties, I'm sure Trivelino will shape up, nicely."

"Would it be terribly wrong for me to admit to you that I fear what's going to happen when she and Logan get to Toronto?"

"I wouldn't worry, Charles. You work with the government. Whatever they do, Nick Fury will see to it that S.H.I.E.L.D. gets it all cleaned and sanitised. Don't be such an old fuddy-duddy. Let them have a little fun."

**II: Logan **

I guess you can call this "What I Did With My Summer Vacation".

I'll tell you what I should have done with my summer vacation.

I should have made Little Miss Ultraviolence drive us to Vancouver and got both our asses onto an airplane and her car into the belly of it and made sure we were both safe and sound in New York.

New York, where I have a nice cushy life, compared to the kind of shit I'm used to.

Yeah, every once in awhile I have to put on a spandex suit and a cowl and go out and kick some ass and gut a few badguys, and save the world a little, but I live in a three-room suite in a mansion, I get three squares a day and most of the time all I'm doing is teaching mutant teenagers how to fight, some of whom are 16 year old girls in tank tops and gym shorts.

Not to mention a certain drop-dead gorgeous blue-eyed blonde 20-year old named Mel Reinhardt who's really a very nice girl waiting for me, the only man on God's Green Earth who can touch her without having to die for it.

So, what the hell am I doing roughing it in a tent with Jack Napier's drunken psycho mask daughter, about whom I have been warned by not less than her own stepfather, the Batman, that if she can find a way to kill me and she gets a wild hair lying across her ass just right, she might do it?

Am I just as fucking crazy as she is?

Crazy as a shithouse rat?

You had better believe it, bub.

Now, I like my life with the X-Men, and not just because of the mansion and the three-squares a day; when you been on your own as much as I have, you really appreciate family, and that's' what they are to me, family.

I don't remember my life ever being better than it is now, and sure, I don't remember much, but most of what I do recall isn't very nice, so I think it's safe to say this is the best I've ever had it.

And I like Mel, too. Shit, I like Mel a lot. She's a beautiful girl, we're good friends, she's a good woman and she makes this ugly old man feel pretty goddamn good.

But, a guy like me gets bored having everything slow and nice and easy, and pretty goddamn good is alright, especially for an old Canucklehead made out of hair and stink, but when I get a shot at shit-hot great balls of fire claws out and roaring like a wild animal in full rut not knowing if I'm comin' or goin', I'm gonna take it, and if I'm gonna die for it, fuck, everybody has to die sometime.

Keeping that in mind, I guess I got what I deserved.

Jeannie and Charlie, they tried to reason with me one more time, but I wasn't seeing their point as to how it might not be too healthy for a man to travel with a woman who can roll out of bed stark naked , shoot a man to pieces, slice him open like a Christmas turkey and then rip his heart out and laugh at him all before she puts in her contact lenses.

Even the Bat begged me to watch out for his little girl, reminding me that I knew the Comedian better than most people, and I should know that if the JLA decided he was Liv's only hope, that should mean something to me.

It didn't.

Hell, I should have had warning bells like air-raid sirens going off in my head when, even after she'd seen me in a rage with my claws up to my knuckles in some poor stiff's guts, she still wanted to get into a cage with me and fight, and she was as close to sober as Liv gets, at the time.

So, yeah, you're right, when you're travelling with a girl whose closest friends and relatives have nicknamed her "Napalm", you should expect the worst, but after travelling with her for awhile and the lengths she went to in order to see to it I had a decent birthday, I was beginning to wonder just what the fuck was going to be so hard for me to handle about her, and just what made her so damn terrible.

I know she's crazier than a shithouse rat, but if you ask me, Liv Napier's as good as gold. A man couldn't ask for a better friend than her, and you can take that to the bank.

Maybe I hadn't sworn in blood since I was a little kid, but maybe I was a little kid the last time I met anybody who was worth swearing in blood to.

Anybody who comes out of this crazy twisted century knowing enough about honor, duty, loyalty or decency to know what it means to swear by your blood to anyone was goddamn hard to come by.

Not to mention she could make me, for a little while, at least, forget about Jeannie.

You know what Napalm does?

It burns everything down.

So I had plenty of reasons to stick with Liv on her quest, and plenty of reasons to tell myself that good ol' Logan had everything under control and everything was gonna be just fine.

Sure, she had nightmares, bad ones, bad as mine, and that's probably why she wanted to sleep alone, in the first place, but if I moved over next to her and got close to her while she was having them, she calmed right down.

After we started sleeping in the same sleeping bag they dwindled just about to nothing; it's amazing what a little kindness can do.

And yeah, she liked to have a few shots and a few beers, but nothing out of the ordinary, and sure, she drove pretty fast but she knew that car like the back of her hand, and she drove it well.

We got into a fight or two in a bar here and there, but nothing to write home to mother about, and sure the kid was hotter than hell and hornier than a rabbit in springtime, but that wasn't anything I couldn't handle, either, let me tell you.

Maybe she's too much for some guys, but not me, I may be a whole lot of things, but I'm a man, goddammit.

So she was a little rough around the edges? The kid was a superhero, not a beauty queen. You could expect that.

On the whole, though she was a lot like the Bat told me she was on her good days.

Pretty and smart, a grown-up tomboy in a woman's body with a sunny disposition, pigtails and Keds and Levis and a thousand-watt smile.

I just got to thinking that mere mortals and non-masks and young guys who only grew their hair long and smoked reefers and pretended not to be the ramrod follow-the-leader bastards their fathers were so they could get laid and not go to war couldn't handle or understand a complicated woman like Wildcat.

But, then there were the Troubles.

I just figured, shit, how bad could it be, when she's in a safe, green, quiet place?

I mean, after I saw what she did to Sabretooth because he scratched her car and he was going to ruin another birthday for me, and maybe over some personal beef she had with him that I didn't know about, anyway, I figured I'd seen her at her worst.

I was wrong.

Yeah, sure, just about everybody who knew Liv all told me it wasn't all going to be fun and games, but it was pretty much fun and games so far.

We stayed in Howlett for a week or three, and I managed to convince her to go see the local doctor, who examined her shoulder and pronounced that she'd healed well.

He told me that he'd been in the Army for ten years, and that Liv had the kinds of scars and injuries you usually associated with Rangers or Marines, and that she had to be in quite a lot of pain, all the time, and must have had an amazing tolerance to it just to get out of bed in the morning.

Her dog, Baldur, was waiting for her at the office of the vet who patched her shoulder up.

He's just the kind of dog you would expect a girl like Liv to have. A big, shaggy beast who's part wolf, part malamute, part husky and about a hundred pounds of completely loyal to Liv.

Me, I get along well with dogs better than people, and as soon as he figured out I wasn't trouble, me and Baldur were alright.

We continued on our way to Toronto, me and her and the dog.

We camped out mostly, and stayed in a few motels, or at a few campsites, and the sun shined almost every day. When it didn't, we stayed in the room or in the tent. She brought a big box of books with her in the trunk of her car, and some of my old favourites were in there, and we were living out our own private version of Walden, except the esteemed Mr. Thoreau didn't find himself alone with the beauty of nature and the horniest hellcat just this side of paradise.

When it started to get really warm and she brought out the cutoff shorts, let me tell you, bub, a woman like Liv in a pair of short shorts makes you goddamn glad that you're a man.

I couldn't figure out what the hell she was talking about when she told me that men didn't usually stick around as long as I had.

I suppose it had something to do with the femininity factor.

On the scale of sweet, feminine and girly, Liv's about the same as the Hulk.

I mean it.

For one thing, she's heavily tattooed.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Liv's tattoos. They tell her story, that's why she has them. And the work's really good; the man who does it for her, Eddie's brother-in-law, Ivan the Bear, he's a genius with a needle, has been ever since he was at Kolyma.

I spent a little time there, but not when the Bear was around.

But, good work or no, when you think of sweet and feminine, you don't think about somebody with tattoos on their knuckles, hands, wrists, forearms, biceps, neck, shoulders, back, and even across her chest.

"You can die today—I'll die tomorrow" right across her collarbone in Gaelic, between the straps of her tank top, with a pentacle and runes between the phrases, right at the top of her breastbone.

I mean, the girl has "Hell" tattooed across the knuckles on her right hand and "Fire" on the other, she's got a skull and crossbones on the back of her right hand and an eye in the palm of her left, and this extremely intricate four color Celtic knotwork tattoo on her neck and the upper part of her chest that's like a choker, a medallion, and a collar that links up with the other tattoo on her chest.

Serious shit, but not very feminine.

At all.

And Liv doesn't dress like a girl.

She doesn't even wear bras and panties, she wears military surplus A-line shirts and army surplus boxers with the waistband folded over around her hips.

The rest of the clothes in her knapsack were a pair of mechanic's coveralls, Levis, the cutoffs, a couple of tee shirts with bands on them, a couple of lumberjack shirts, a couple of fatigue shirts and a OD pullover. As it was summer, most of the time she just wore the Levis over the boxers.

She had three coats shoved into the trunk, a canvas blue welder's jacket, a beat-up sheepskin and leather bomber and a fatigue jacket.

Okay, so she dresses like a Nam vet with shell shock, and I'm pretty sure most of her clothes are actually men's clothes, not women's.

But in the time I've been on this rock, I've seen a lot of women's fashions come and go, and every kind of dress and skirt and slacks and underwear, and I've spent many nights walking home with my balls as blue as Dr. Manhattan's because I couldn't convince those fine ladies to take their pretty clothes off.

And Liv's got a whole lotta woman under those Levi's stained with mud and the undershirt with motor oil on it and those folded-over boxers, and as long as she doesn't have any trouble sharing it with me, I don't care what she wears.

She doesn't act like a girl, either, but you'll forgive me if I say that's a relief.

I'm not the most mannerly of guys, and you get tired of women telling you to use a napkin and quit belching and did you just fart and don't put those ashes everywhere and change your shirt once in awhile and don't touch me, you're disgusting, which is usually followed by you never pay attention to me anymore, am I getting fat?

I could even swear as much as I wanted, and Liv was usually either in the mood, or real easy to get in the mood.

What more could a guy ask for?

And the grass was green and the trees were green and the birds were singing and yours truly, being half-drunk and well-fucked, which is exactly the two states of mind every man wants to be in, all the time, no matter what kind of lies he tells you to the contrary, was a happy man.

I hadn't killed anybody in two months, either, and I didn't miss it.

I guess Jeannie was right, but she wasn't just right about me, she had Napalm pegged, too.

And I can try to put a nice lacy doily around it and say we were just taking a long vacation from the usual grind of blood and brutality, but the plain fact of it was that me and Liv were both half-drunk and well-fucked, and in no hurry for a change.

Then, just like the hellacious prairie storms that sent Liv and I running for cover out of a warm and sunny day, the Troubles came.

The Troubles came with no one to look after her but me, and no place for me to lock her away, to keep her or the rest of the world safe.

And they came with a vengeance that showed me why such precautions were necessary.

I was awakened from the deep sleep of a man who is half-drunk and well-fucked by one of the most horrible screams I've heard in at least fifty years.

Liv was sitting up in her sleeping bag, she wasn't awake, just sitting up and screaming. This time I hardly had to touch her and her eyes flew open and I from the look in them for the first time in four weeks of travelling with her that she wasn't the cheerful psychopath she pretended to be.

"Daddy! Daddy, save me!" she screamed.

And she had this look on her face, this look of screaming, helpless terror like there was death and pain and fear stalking her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Have you ever been that afraid?

I have, and I can tell you, it's no picnic.

Hindsight being 20-20, I guess that dream is the gate that opens up the cage and frees whatever I was warned lived inside Napalm, whatever it is that comes out and makes the Troubles.

But, I didn't know that at the time.

Maybe I should have.

I guess my problem was that I was half-drunk and well-fucked and I didn't want any trouble to come along and interrupt my peaceful dream.

I sure as fuck didn't want the Troubles.

I got them just the same.

Anyway, As soon as she came around from whatever she was seeing in that hellacious dream, she started to look like she was really awake, and started fumbling in her knapsack and cracked a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels.

"Don't ask me, Logan! Just go the fuck back to sleep." She snarls

She grabbed the bottle and walked out of the tent, barefoot and naked as the day she was born.

When I woke up the next morning she was sitting outside in the dirt by the ashes of the fire pit, wide awake, and the bottle was empty.

The next night she said she was going to sleep in the car, and that's where she was when I got up to take a piss, but in the morning she was nowhere in sight and I had to go look for her.

I found her wandering around in the woods, drunk and naked with scratches all over her from sharp branches and thorns.

She didn't even realise that they were there, and I think it took her a minute or two before she remembered who I was.

Now the first sign of the Troubles was for Liv to start having more nightmares, and withdrawing into her own private hell and to begin drinking more heavily.

But I was kidding myself, because I didn't want to have to deal with it.

So when she'd wake up in a black mood muttering about the hair of the dog that bit her, and started drinking at breakfast, and kept slugging it down until she was drunk as a bum under a bridge, and then go wandering off naked into the brush, I hoped the kid was going on a tear.

People do, you know, especially drunks, and the Wildcat was one of your more functional drunks, a fact she made no bones about, and I don't know if the woods of Great White North is the best place to dry out or if I'm the kinda guy who's qualified to help.

So, like a dumb ass, when she had a reasonably lucid moment and asked me to, I just got in the car and went and bought more booze.

I figured that might quiet her down.

Meanwhile, things were getting worse every day.

Liv was at the point where she was puking on her shoes and when I suggested maybe she should ease up a little she gave me the finger and went off into the woods again with her old buddy Jack Daniels.

She didn't come back all day, this time. When it started to get late, me and the dog sat there in the tent for half the night and looked at each other, and then sat outside half the night and looked at each other, and then we went off into the woods to find her.

We found her in the facedown on the ground outside in a puddle of piss, puke, and whiskey, and that poor dog just sat down beside her and howled, mournfully.

Now I know that doesn't sound like a pretty sight, and that's because it wasn't, and I gotta tell you, I wasn't sure what the hell to do next.

I carried her back to the campsite and then to the showers to wash her off.

She didn't wake up.

All of the sudden, it wasn't all fun and games, and I got the picture that my task, and I had been crazy enough to accept it, was to shepherd home a violent, half-mad alcoholic who had parted ways with much of her sanity and her humanity a while back, and was hell-bent on destruction, both of herself and anyone else she might run into, and had the training and the strength to kill just about anyone but me, and might just be in the mood to do it.

Napalm.

The next day, I said something to her about how drunk she got, and she gave me that devil-eyed look and asked me how I would feel about getting shot multiple times with the chopper.

Whatever she was going through, it wasn't over, yet.

I didn't know what the fuck was happening.

For a week, she didn't do anything but drink.

All day long and all night until she passed out.

I had to make the food and drive the car and take care of Baldur, and when Liv drank herself into a stupor and passed out, I had to take care of her, too.

And then, she woke up in the morning and she seemed just fine.

No drinking until she was cross-eyed, no wandering around in the woods naked so I had to go and find her before she tumbled down a canyon, no death-threats, nothing.

I figured the binge was over, and I'd made it through the Troubles, so I decided I'd let her alone, give her some time for the hangover from to wear off.

That night, she wanted to go out to some bar and play some pool and listen to some records, and when we got in the car she was even sober enough to drive.

And I didn't notice the bar she pulled into was a dive, not even when we were in it.

I'm used to dives.

Now that the kid wasn't too drunk to drive, screaming all night, or threatening to penetrate my hide with multiple calibre bullets, I figured the Troubles were over, and I gotta confess that I was so relieved that I was pretty goddamn drunk by the time the shit really hit the fan.

I was just about as wrong about that as a man can be.

I have seen some things, and I have seen some more things, and I thought I had seen it all in my long, long, long life, but bub, I have never seen anything like what the Harlequin did.

I'm not sure if somebody dropped an H-bomb in my lap that it would kill me, and just because I'm not that fond of pain, I can tell you I wouldn't do anything like what the she did.

And when I say that, I mean I would have had a whole helluva lot better approach.

Just about any kind of goddamn plan would have been a better approach.

But, then again, I'm not the Joker's little girl, and let me tell you something that Black Tom Logan was right about.

Blood is blood, and blood rules out.

You know the last guy in a dive you would ever want to fuck with?

The one who looks like he keeps rotting heads in a bag in his trunk so he can skull-fuck them?

Sorry about putting that picture in your head, but I just wanted you to know what kind of asshole this asshole was.

So, imagine a guy like that, and imagine he has about twenty skull-fucking, pushing-smack-to-children, old-lady-murdering, baby-raping, kiddie-porn trafficking, dog-buggering, shoot you just to watch you die, heavily armed psychotic goons high on speed and cheap booze surrounding him.

Now imagine that you are a woman five foot two with your shoes on, tipping the scales at about a buck forty-five, with no superpowers to speak of, and these guys, though lowlives not deserving of the oxygen they suck up, haven't even so much as looked at you.

"You see that fat motherfucker? And his butt buddies? I don't like 'em." Liv says.

"I don't like 'em, either, Wildcat. But it's not up to me to kill every asshole in the world, tonight." I joked.

Now don't get me wrong.

You know me.

If that fat prick or any of his goons started any shit with me, well you got a pretty good idea of how that would come out.

But what the fuck did I care if they were just gonna sit there?

I just wanted to have a couple of goddamn beers, and maybe a few shots, that's all.

"Fine. You finish your drink. I'll be right back."

I thought she was going to get a fucking drink, but instead, and if I'm lying , then that that fuck Victor Creed is my brother or my father or whoever he says he is, she calmly walked up to the head honcho.

"Hey, fat boy! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, you fat fuck prick! I'm not sure I like you stinkin' up this pristine wilderness. I'm gonna give you to three to haul your ass outa here and take your goons with you…and then I'm gonna shoot you, cut out your goddamn liver like Jeremiah fuckin' Johnson and eat it, and leave ya on this floor to die. Slow."

You could have heard a pin drop.

The fat bastard laughed, Liv counted to three, and then she pulled out one of her .45's and blew his kneecap to Buffalo.

You can imagine that the big fat piece of shit went down like a ton of bricks.

His goons, however, were not amused.

Three or four of them turned around and ran out the door.

They were smart enough to realise that anybody who had did something like what the kid just did wasn't fucking around.

That still left about sixteen guys for her to fight, and they weren't fucking around either.

The whole place went up.

The last thing I saw before they converged on her was Liv breaking a bottle and giving one guy a face full of glass while she smacked another one's head off the bar, repeatedly, until blood started squirting out of it.

This is how the Harlequin does it when she's not fucking around.

Some of the local yokels wanted in on it, but when they saw my claws, most of them decided to go sit the fuck down and finish their drinks and watch the show.

And after I sliced and diced one of the goons who was shooting at me first and figuring fuck questions and I didn't seem to die, that gave the rest of them something to think about while I did some good old-fashioned pounding on them.

Like the Professor says, you shouldn't kill unless you have to, so I just pretty much beat them like I owned them.

Tossed a couple through the window, just to show I was serious.

But, if good old Napalm was the one with the claws, all those fuckers would have been dead.

Sometimes when I think about it, I think she really didn't need me. I probably could have sat there and not got shot, or beat, or stabbed, or stomped and it would have turned out the same.

Bloody.

Real bloody.

Like slipping in blood and puke and piss on the floor bloody.

Imagine if you took a bunch of assholes, and put them in a blender and turned it on.

That's what it looked like.

One of them after another came flying or staggering or falling or away from her, blood splattering and teeth flying through the air, pukin' on themselves from getting a steel-toed boot in the belly, or having their ribs punched in or their larynxes crushed by a fist that packed a lot more power than it looked like they would.

Some on 'em holding their useless broken arms with the bones sticking out and the gun still in their hands and screaming in pain, looking at what happened to their buddies and literally pissing themselves in fear.

I'm the best at what I do, and what I do isn't very nice, but the Harlequin, she's the best at what she does, too, and what she does is show bad guys what Hell is going to be like by bringing it to them right here on Earth.

By the time I fought my way over to her to save her, she was all done, and the place looked like a Hurricane had hit it.

Hurricane Liv.

She didn't look too good either, but she was standing and walking, which was more than I could say for Fat Boy and most of his goons.

Between the two of us, we laid them all out.

She leaned over to talk to Fat Boy, who was still on the ground, holding onto what was left of his knee.

"Bet you wished you woulda got the fuck out when I toleja, chief." She chuckles.

Now I'd like to say that I'm a hundred per cent sure that she was just flashing that knife at Fat Boy for effect and she was not going to slice him open and tear his liver out and eat it raw, while he watched her as he bled to death screaming in agony, but she did tell Sabretooth she was going to rip his heart out and then she did it, so I wasn't going to take anything for granted.

"I think he's had enough, kid. I think you've had enough, too." I said.

"Yeah, you gotta point, Logan. I can afford to be merciful."

She was merciful.

She put the knife away, pulled one of her guns, jammed it against his head, and drilled Fat Boy right between the eyes.

Now I know you've been to the movies, but have you ever seen what a .45 caliber bullet with a full metal jacket does to a man's head at point-blank range in real life?

You know how much blood and bone and brains you're gonna get all over yourself if you're holding the gun that fires it?

Or if you're standing next to the lunatic holding the gun?

Trust me, bub, you don't want to.

I can tell you this, though, Napalm didn't even flinch.

She put her gun away and gave the bartender a piece of paper.

"Send the bill here. If you have any more trouble with these lowlife motherfuckers, call the Harlequin. C'mon, Logan, we're done, here."

And she leaves.

I was so fucking surprised, I just stood there for a minute or two in the middle of it, looking around.

"Jesus, Mister, did you know she was gonna do that?" the bartender asks me.

"Bub, I had no fuckin' idea."

"She came in here this morning, and I said Old Fat Joe and his gang were making it hard for me to do business in this place, and that the local cops didn't give a shit as they are bought and paid for. Sure I told her what a bunch of dope-pushing murdering low-life sons of bitches him and his outfit were, and how they been making it so decent people can hardly live in this town, and I can't say as how I'm not glad to see him dead, but, Jesus, Mister, I ain't never even heard of anything like that. Don't get me wrong now, that man lying there with his brains on the floor was one of the worst excuses for a human being the Good Lord ever allowed to suck up air on his Green Earth, but…but if I didn't know better I'd think the Devil himself sent up a little red demon to carry Old Fat Joe and some of them sons of bitches right down to Hell."

I looked around.

"I'm not so sure of that, myself." I said.

And I don't know who cleans up the kid's messes in New York, either the cops do or maybe the Justice League does, or New York's so full of bodies and bullshit nobody notices, but I had to call up some people who I'm not supposed to know and who aren't supposed to exist at midnight to do some damage control.

When I finally got out of there, I found Liv waiting for me behind the wheel, with the engine running.

She was too beat up and too drunk to drive, but that didn't stop her.

Not Napalm.

She was just getting warmed up.

After having annihilated some of the most fearsome members of one of the biggest outlaw biker gangs in Ontario, it was time for her to annihilate us.

The whole goddamn car smells like blood and death, and on top of it, she's flying down these dark winding roads, downhill, with no lights at all, with one eye swollen shut, playing Led Zeppelin on the radio at a deafening volume, bleeding all over the seats.

Big surprise, she's still drinking.

There's blood all over her and some of it has to be hers, but she's so keyed up and getting so drunk so fast, I don't think she even realises that she's hurt at all.

And me, I don't wanna try and take the wheel because if she shoots me in the head and I'm out of it for a few minutes while my brain regenerates, we might get killed.

That's the kind of mood she's in.

If I say three words to her, she'll start putting bullets in my fucking head.

She's killed at least five men, tonight, and she's not done yet, she won't be done until she's lying dead in a ditch somewhere and I'm in for about 12 hours of pain and suffering while my body knits itself back together.

I don't want to have to lie at the bottom of a canyon in agony, looking at her broken and mangled and dead beside me the whole time.

So I'm sitting there, saying my prayers, and trying to figure out what to do next when she starts to take a turn way too fast.

I lunged over and cracked her one in the shoulder, hard, right where she got shot, which put her in enough agony that I could manage to shove her into the passenger set, get in the driver's seat and shift gears and get on the brakes and the clutch and pray to God and crank the wheel.

It took less time to say it than it did to do it.

We laid some tire, and sideswiped the guardrail, with paint scraping and sparks flying, but they knew what they were doing in Detroit when they made that big bitch Super Wildcat, and we made it.

If she'd been alone, and there was nobody in the car to save her ass, she would have got an all-expense paid trip down the embankment and it was pretty dark, but I'm fairly sure there were jagged rocks below.

The kid was looking at me funny and holding onto her arm, like she was already drunk and confused and now she was in horrible pain and she couldn't figure out what was happening.

I took the opportunity to pull the car over to the side of the road, and put both my hands on her arms and shake her a little and get right in her face, to try and snap her out of it.

"What the fuck are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind? Okay, the bartender said something about running those scumbags off, maybe putting the ringleader on ice, but off the top of my head I can think of about twenty ways to do it that would have been a lot better idea than that! Do you know how incredibly fucked up you are if I, me, Wolverine has to tell you to knock off the ultraviolence? And what the fuck was that all about, the way you were driving? Would you like to die? This ain't the fuckin' city, you don't ram a pole and get out and say, aw shit! If we go over the hill, I'm in a lotta pain, but you are fuckin' done! Dead! Busted into little bloody bits hanging from rocks? You get me?"

She sure as shit didn't get me.

She got that hopeless look of crazy, mindless, evil look on her face, and grinned me a great big Joker smile.

And laughed.

I looked in her eyes and they were like two cat's eye marbles, there was nobody home.

You don't ever want to see anything like that.

It's a helluva lot worse than anything else I just described to you, seeing something like that.

"If you were anybody else, this would be the part where I put a gun to your head and told you that you'd better let me drive. But you know, and I know, chief, that would only make you mad. But you had better let me drive, anyway. Because even you gotta sleep sometime. And when you think this is all in the past, I will get that fancy special machete made outa the same adamantium you got your bones wrapped in from my trunk, and I will chop your motherfuckin' head right off and throw it so far you'll die chasing after it."

Jeannie was right.

So, not only is she threatening to kill me, she's put some thought into the best way to do it.

Well, I don't like to get violent with a woman, but that was it, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

If I wanted us both to get to sunrise alive, I was gonna have to get tough.

I jammed my fist under her chin, hard, and unsheathed a claw on either side of her face. I know they were close enough to her skin to cut her just a little, but I wanted her to know I was serious.

Deadly goddamn serious.

Did I mention she still didn't flinch?

"Not if I see you, first, baby! Now you sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and let me drive, or the next move you make will be your last! Two can play at that game. I can pop that middle claw and push this car over that hill and tell everybody how you went out in a blaze of stupidity, and they'll believe it."

She was pretty sure I wasn't really going to kill her, but just in case, she kept still.

Now, I got torn up pretty good, but by the time we got back to the campsite I was healed up like nothing ever happened.

She was a different story.

It didn't bother her I threatened to kill her, as soon as I retracted my claws and moved my hand, she just crawled off into the back seat where she had a blanket and more booze and she mumbled something that sounded pretty insulting, and just then, I didn't give a fuck what happened to the crazy little Devil.

Even in the dark I could see she'd taken some serious damage, you don't fight that may guys and not take some serious damage, but I was too mad to care.

I figured that if she could live through getting shot all by herself, she'd make it through a simple beating and a few superficial nicks here and there, and I got my shit together and took the two-fifty that was rightfully mine and jammed my knapsack onto my back and started walking.

I think I was about two miles down the road before I started to think about what would happen in the morning when she woke up feeling like Thor himself was inside her head beating her skull with his hammer, in the back seat of her car all covered in dried blood with the blanket all stiff with it, her whole body hurting and her face all swollen up and looking like ten pounds of raw hamburger and found that whatever demon that got inside her had gone, and she was all alone, again.

Then I realised that after she pulled these stunts at home, she had to stagger back to someplace to lick her wounds, probably back to Wayne Manor for a stern lecture, but it was home, where there were people who would help her get cleaned up and put her back together and put her to bed and keep an eye on her so she didn't throw up while she was unconscious and choke to death, as drunk as she was.

A place where people showed her a little kindness, a little tenderness.

Family.

Friends.

I was her friend, hell I was more than that, and I knew it.

I swore by my blood and on my honour that I'd always be her friend and never betray her, and those ain't the kind of oaths a man like me takes lightly.

If I only stuck around when things were good and got in the wind the minute they went bad, what kind of way was that to keep my oath?

If she swore by her blood that she would always be loyal and true and always my friend, that meant she wasn't gonna kill me in cold blood while I slept, didn't it?

What about a little kindness and a little tenderness?

Sure, Logan, it's easy to show the kid a little kindness and a little tenderness when you're in bed with her, but how about now? Now that she's drunk and savage and furious and bleeding and she's just about ready to saw off your head?

Now's when she needs it most.

Just like you did, once upon a time not so long ago.

And when I started thinking about her bleeding to death during the night, or lying the wrong way and choking on her own puke, and somebody finding her the next morning dead in the car, under a dirty blanket stiff with dried blood, one eye swollen shut and one staring blankly up at them, the dog howling mournfully beside the car, I turned around and walked right back.

The car door was half-open when I got there and the tough little broad was trying to get out and stand up, but she couldn't, and she was hanging onto Baldur, who kept licking her face and whining.

He gave me an accusing look as I came close to the car.

"Hey, she's never threatened to kill you." I told the dog.

I opened the door all the way and hauled her out.

"Okay, She-Hulk. Time to hit the showers." I said.

"Logan, you know I wouldn't do nothin' to really hurtcha. I got an oath to keep." She says.

"So do I. And I never woulda popped that third claw, either. Quit trying to stand. I gotcha." I replied

When I got her to the showers and I saw her in the light, I realised she was hurt pretty goddamn bad.

One eye was swollen shut, her nose was all over her face and had dried blood all over it, her lip was puffy and split and she had two or three slashes on her arm that I could see.

That was just the obvious damage.

It wasn't shit compared to what she did to ten of fifteen grown men in her fury, but that's' a lot of punishment for a little girl to take, and I couldn't just let her lie there and bleed.

I cleaned her up, and put her back together, and in the light in the showers I could see bruises starting to form on her body, especially around her kidneys and her ribs.

I helped her put some clean clothes on and walked her back to the car, which I had to clean up, and then I broke camp, and drove us to a roadside motel and got a room.

We checked in around dawn.

She needed a bed, and she was going to need one for a couple of days.

When I put her in the bed and covered her up, she went right to sleep, and I went right back out to the car and got her bottle from the back seat and finished it, and then I called the Bat and told him everything that happened, and he didn't seem surprised and thanked me for taking good care of her and getting her out of trouble.

But I got really upset, and I was yelling and screaming and at the end of it I asked him something like didn't he know that she was going to get herself killed, and what was he going to do about it, because I couldn't think of anything.

"Yes. But the only thing that's going to stop her is fear. She knows I would never kill her, so she doesn't fear me enough to listen to me. And she's figured out that you would never kill her, so she doesn't fear you enough to listen to you. But, the Comedian, he's a wild animal, just like she is. Except he's an older, meaner, bigger wild animal who already did what she's doing when he was a young pup like her. She listens to him. She always has."

Now I know Eddie Blake, and I knew him when he was a young pup, we were fighting the Nazis together with the Invaders, and I saw just what he was made of when he and I and poor dead Bucky Barnes got cut off behind enemy lines and had to make our way through Hell to get back to base camp.

And I had just done a tour with Eddie, and I had the Operation Wrath of God patch on my fatigues to prove it.

On and off the battlefield, I have been Eddie Blake's friend and he has been mine since 1943 or so, and I know him well, and I know Napalm pretty well, so I also know just why it was she listened to him.

Bruce probably does, too, but he doesn't want to think about it,

"I love her, Logan. A lot of people love her. Love hasn't worked. So I'm going to have to try fear."

I wanted to tell him that his thinking was all wrong; Liv wasn't scared to die; she laughed at fear and death. I was about to tell him that maybe since he was her father, he just couldn't show her the kind of love she needed.

Like the man at the hotel in BC said, sometimes all a woman needs from a man is for him to shut up and be a man.

Still, it was his idea and somebody had to break it to him.

"You really think that's what it's gonna be between them? Fear?" I asked.

The Batman sighed, heavily.

"Don't tell me this, Logan. Please don't tell me that Satan himself made my little girl in Hell just for that old Devil Eddie Blake and that she's just as full of sulphur and molten hellfire as he is, and that's why she listens to him."

"Bruce, as long as she listens to him, and he treats her with, well, a little kindness, a little tenderness, what do you care?" I asked.

That didn't seem to make him feel much better.

So, I promised him again I'd have her home, safe and sound, and he said that while we were in Toronto, we could stay at his penthouse along the lakefront.

The next morning, despite my best efforts, Liv's face looked like ten pounds of raw hamburger, and she had bruises all over her body, and the one's I'd noticed the night before were real goddamn bad.

I know she must have had a cracked rib or two, and I was surprised she could get out of bed under her own steam , and that she could manage to twist those swollen lips into a smile.

"You look like hell, Logan." She told me.

"So do you, Napalm. But Fat Boy's dead, and so are a few of his goons, and those people in that little town are free of 'em, so, I guess the good guys won."

"You got that right. Sometimes street justice is the best justice. But you already know that. Anyway, I'm done now. They've passed. My Troubles, I mean. I'll have to stay in bed for a day or two, and I imagine Ill be pissin' blood for a week, but, insofar as Troubles go, I should be good until right around Christmas. I was having the Troubles every month for awhile there, but I'm a little better now. I was kinda hoping I'd get back to New York before it happened again, but, well, I'm sorry."

I didn't know what the fuck to say to her.

"Liv, you have to find out what makes you do shit like that and stop it. Or you are going to die, woman."

"I know. But right now, I think I just need some sleep."

I made sure she got to the can and back, and that she had some food and I put her back to bed and got in beside her.

I needed some sleep, too. I was out like a light for a good long time.

In two days, though, Liv was up and around, and she was back to her normal self .

We hit the road with her behind the wheel. Me in the passenger seat and Baldur in the back with his head out the window, just like in better times.

In the next town she got some paint and some fill and fixed the car, and she healed pretty fast for a regular human.

By the next week everything was the way it had been before, just like nothing ever happened, and Liv acted like nothing ever happened.

Me, I didn't say shit to her about it; I didn't want to bring it on again.

What the hell else could I do?

I'll admit it, I just wasn't the man for the job.

I swore on my blood to be her friend and that's an oath I'll be proud to keep, but I can't be her knight in shining armor.

That little dream I had of retiring to a little cabin in the mountains with the Wildcat died right about then.

For one thing, I knew she would never make it on that quiet, normal life deal, and for another, I knew I wouldn't either.

And she needed more than a little kindness and a little tenderness, she needed love, real love. And it had to come from the dark heart of a man who saw her for everything she really was, good and bad, and still loved her, just the same.

And my heart may be black, but it's not a Heart of Darkness.

**I: Liv**

Boy, do I know how to fuck up a good thing.

Because I can only think of one man I ever met that I don't scare the unholy fuck out of.

Not to say Logan is scared of me that I'm going to seriously hurt him. Nobody can seriously hurt him.

What I did manage to do was freak him out, seriously. I mean, he knew I was kind of a tough broad, but someplace in his mind I think he was still seeing me as just this spunky little Twinkie he was putting the cream to.

When I was boxing those fucks for money, I was just screwing around. When I just about sawed Victor Creed in half, well, I lost my temper. Logan and I both knew I couldn't kill the bastard , I just wanted to make sure my friend Logan had a happy birthday and that Sabretooth never forgot the Harlequin.

When I took on those lowlives in the bar, I was serious, I was doing my fucking job.

That said, had I not been in the midst of the Troubles, I would have used a slightly less completely fucking psycho approach.

But back to Wolverine, all of the sudden, our relations were strained.

Okay, maybe I do have a machete that supposedly could cut through adamantium, but it's never been tested and I would never have really cut off his head and I know he would never have really popped that third claw.

When you're not innocent or clean and you never have been, and decent people have spit on you since the day you were born, you got nothing but your honor to give and nothing but your blood to swear it by, so you can bet that neither of us were really going to break the oath we took.

Still, those kinds of situations tend to put a chill on anybody's good faith in each other, so when I say our relations were strained, I mean we were no longer having them. And I'm not just talking about the kind of relations that used to take place on a regular basis in and around our tent and our campsites.

We were barely fucking speaking.

I'm talking I think Logan would have been in the wind if he hadn't promised Bruce that he would see me safely home and there wasn't blood between us.

I can't say I blame him, after the shit I pulled.

I'm used to it. A lotta men, they meet Liv, they think she's a little wild, but they like her, but when they meet the Harlequin, well, they're pissing their pants and screaming for Mommy.

Now Logan, he's not some uptown Manhattan faux-hippie fake freak jock in high school who used to make fun of real freaks pussy, so I figured that I could find a way to make amends, at least so we could continue as friends after this adventure. Because, even putting aside the masterful way in which he was consistently slipping me the old beef torpedo, I like the hairy little bastard, and I trust him.

He's my friend.

And it's blood between us.

Well I was driving, and it was my blood and sweat that got us the money for this little trip and you know me by now, I have no shame, no finesse, and no subtlety, so fuck yeah, I brought it up.

"Hey, Logan, if you want me to leave you and your dough off in the next town, I understand. I'm used to it. I'm a freak and I've been an outcast all my life; I'm used to people getting a load of the real me and running screaming into the night. I'm all better now, I can make it on my own. I'll see you in Toronto, and if not, I'll see you around."

"When I make a promise, I keep it."

Terse and and square-jawed, like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti Western.

"Goddamnit, ya threatened to kill me, too! I was one claw away from gettin' shish-kebabed, and I ain't holding a grudge. So I'm tough. So I'm a killer. So are you, and it never bothered me."

Logan just puffed his cigar and gave me a funny look.

We were a mile or five down the road before he said anything

"You're a loose cannon, kid. That's what bothers me. People say I am, but when it comes down to it, I've got my shit together. You don't. I'm not worried about myself. I know you'll keep your oath. I'm worried about you. I don't want to see you die, and you pull another stunt like that and I may not be able to get to you before all I have to take home to your stepfather is a pine box. Liv, I want you to understand, I'm not sayin' I think you shoulda treated those lowlives with kid gloves. I can't say I'm personally opposed to you killin' some of 'em, maybe, and I'm glad Charlie ain't here to hear me say it, all of 'em, but we both know killin' all of 'em, that might be the easiest way, but it ain't right. No, what bothers me is the way you did it. It would just about take a miracle to kill me, and I wouldn't have played it that way, simply because I'm not that big of a fan of being in, or even dishing out, that much pain. It was dumb. Especially for somebody who's 100% mortal. And somebody who obviously knows better. I know shit like that wouldn't fly in New York."

"I usually plan things out better than that. I think if you weren't there, I'd be dead."

"Me too. Listen, Napalm, when you get back, Bruce is planning to apprentice you to Eddie. And as somebody who's known him longer than you have, I can tell you that he's a real bad, mean, son-of-a-bitch, a real wild animal. But Eddie, he's not a product of some experiment and he ahsn't got any superpowers. He's just a man. But he's the only man I know who could get a load of you at your worst, crack a smile, and let it roll off him like water off a duck's back. Do yourself a favor. Stick with him. Learn from him. Listen to him. Other than that, you're headed to an early grave, and then straight to Hell."

"Logan, I always listen to Eddie."

"Bullshit. If you always listened to Eddie, you wouldn't have done any of the stupid shit you did this year. You gotta mind the man even if he's not right there, tellin' you what to do. And the same with me. An' Bruce. An' Clark. When you listen to alla the shit whizzing around in your great big jumped up Boeing 747 roaring jet engine mind, try to filter out the bullshit and pay attention to what people who are older and wiser than you have told you a million goddamn times. You might live to see thirty, if you do." Logan snapped.

Then, he turned away from me.

Most of the time there's nothing I can do to take that creeping mortal fear out a person when they've seen that I'd be capable of killing them with the same amount of compunction I'd have about killing a mosquito.

But, in Logan's case, there was something I could do to make him feel better.

I pulled the car over to the side of the road and I got out.

Logan got curious, and he got out, too.

I took out the special machete that Bruce had given me.

"I know you take me at my word, Logan, but I just wanna show you I take a blood oath seriously. Everybody told ya I was dangerous, an' everybody was right. But the one thing they don't seem to know is that just because I might be capable of killing anybody, including my friends, that doesn't mean I'd ever do it. I don't kill for sport, or because I'm angry, I only kill when I have to, when my life is threatened, or when it's what justice calls for. First lesson Bruce taught me, and there isn't enough booze or anger or madness in the world to make me forget it. Now, if for any reason I could go mad enough to break my oath to you, this is the only thing in the world I could do it with."

I took the machete, went to the edge of the treeline, found a sharp slope and tossed the thing as hard as I could.

"Fuck it. Bruce can buy me another one. Adamantium's expensive, but he's made of money. Let's get back in the car." I said.

I held out my hand like I wanted to shake on it, and Logan got this big smile on his face, and he took my hand and hauled me to him and laid a big old soul kiss on me.

"I liked that better than a handshake." I told him.

"I shake hands with men. No use wastin' a woman like you."

Then the crazy bastard went down over the hill to get the machete back.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.

"Gettin' your weapon back. I got six of these and you got one. That evens out the odds if we do ever get really mad at each other." he said.

Man has a good point, there.

We got back on the road, and just like I'd told them in the building where Bruce has his penthouse, later on that day, we arrived in Toronto.

I couldn't wait to see the look on Logan's face when he got a load of that joint.


	5. Get Slim REVISED & UPDATED

**V: Get Slim**

**Toronto, Canada , August, 1970**

**I: Liv**

Now, before I go on to the next part of the story, I gotta tell you something that you probably already figured out, but I have to make this clear if the rest of this is going to make any sense to you.

When I'm in New York, I have a lot of work to do.

I have to keep myself busy.

I took some time off in the Spring, and you see where that got me. I mean, shit, if I had too much free time I'd probably drink myself to death, or be on Death Row in the end stage of syphilis, by now.

There's my mask work, my work at the lab, my graduate school classes, and the classes I teach. Then there's the cars I'm working on, and my friends and Justice League meetings, and as a result of this, I don't have more than an hour or two a day to devote to fucking.

Now if I have three or four hours to fuck in, I'll do it, but I always wondered, if I had all day long to fuck and I had a guy who had a lot of stamina and could get it up three or four times in a day, would I really fuck all day, every day?

And if I did, would I eventually get tired of it?

I had spent the summer finding out that the answer to those burning questions.

Yes, I would, and no, I wouldn't.

I mean, all me and Logan really had to do was drive, eat, sleep, drink and fuck, and on some days we didn't even drive, so we did a lot of fucking and when I say a lot of fucking I mean that in one summer I tried to make up for all of the years of Logan's life when blow-jobs and muff-diving were out of style.

Yeah, it sure is as good as it sounds.

Now, I'm gonna take it for granted that you are not either a feral mutant or a little Mick meatball of a Brooklyn Irish thug, and assume that you have had, in your life, a steady supply of steady significant others.

Like having food in the fridge.

You go to bed every night knowing that there will be breakfast tomorrow, and lunch and dinner, because the fridge and the freezer and the cupboards are full.

Now, imagine how well you'd sleep if they were empty, and you had to scrounge for every meal.

It's just as much fun having to scrounge for every screw, and broads like me and guys like Logan, people want to know us for an hour, tops, preferably in the middle of the night, and then they'd like us to please get the fuck out.

Now.

So, on top of the other joys of life as a dirty jobs mask, you get to wake up every morning wondering when the next time you'll be getting any action is, and your usual opportunity to get any is in the middle of the night at a bar after work, and by that time, you'll be fucking grateful for some quick head in the car from just about anybody of the opposite sex who doesn't have sores around their lips.

A drink and a warm mouth in the dark, how's that sound?

It's like Eddie told me once, this one time right before I spilt New York when I came to a Watchmen meeting drunk off my ass and passed out as I was leaving, and he had to take me home.

He said I'd probably be a lot happier if I could find myself a guy who treated me decent, who didn't just shoot his wad on me, wipe his dick on the curtains and leave.

I kinda know what he meant, now.

Because you get pretty fucking desperate, let me tell you, and when you have the opportunity to make up for it, just like the starving man who goes to the all you can eat buffet, once you're at the table, you go crazy from the heat.

Not to mention, warm weather has that effect on me. Once the mercury goes above 60 during the day and stays there, I get really horny and violent, and the hotter it gets the hotter I get, until I'm always in the mood to have a real good time.

It was just fucking and sucking and wanking and spanking in with some boozing and cruising. Day in and day out, morning, noon and night for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months. I gotta say I slept pretty soundly at night and I had to change my shorts and piss a lot, but I felt pretty damn good about life, and I had a real good time.

I think Logan did, too.

I don't think the man ever did so much screwing with such intensity in all his life; he only thought Mel Reinhardt was screwing his brains out and then he met me. Every time he turned around I was either sucking his dick or jumping on it and if he liked the way I smelled so much I never had any objection to him getting his nose right in it.

None at all.

And I'm telling you this because, as we began to drive into Toronto, I think we both knew that we were going to have to get to work, and then, worse, we were going to have to get back to reality. We'd already made an agreement to meet up every Wednesday, and sure, we're friends and there's blood between us, but the party was almost over and neither of us really wanted it to end. Especially considering we'd be in Bruce's plush penthouse where I had a California king-size waterbed in my bedroom, and a big stereo, and there was Pop's giant color TV.

Not to mention the proximity of Kensington Market, which is like Greenwich Village, only with you being less likely to get mugged at night by some bum from the Bowery, and I'd had the penthouse completely stocked with the best booze in the known universe and floor to ceiling with the best food money can buy.

I'm talking one hundred year old Scotch and half a cow in the freezer.

Sound good?

Sure it does.

Now, me and Logan, we both work hard at a real nasty, dirty, bloody job, that nobody else wants to do. I mean, being a superhero is a nice, clean, groovy gig when you're Superman or Charlie Xavier, but when you swim in the dirty end of the pool with the sharks, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and Mom and Apple Pie.

Mostly because, if it's time for masks like them to get off their high horse, put on the hip waders and dive into an ocean of shit to create a river of blood and then get it all cleaned up so the nice people can come and walk over a field strewn with flowers, it's call the Harlequin, send out the Wolverine, and is the Comedian busy?

Whoa, now there's a thought.

Hold the phone.

Stop the presses!

Being the meat in a Logan and Eddie Blake sandwich.

Oh, man!

You got me, I got a thing for the Comedian.

Since I was about 13 years old.

My shrink, he was worried about that, he said I was an erotomaniac.

I like the sound of that, maybe I'll have it put on a tee shirt.

Someday, Mr. Blake's really going to get it, whether he wants it, or not.

Anyway, my sick and degenerate letch for a man I've known literally all my life, aside, I'm not trying to knock Clark, and I know that Logan wouldn't say anything bad about Charlie. But the two of them, they really believe that you should be able to solve any problem without resorting to violence and I wish it were true. But there is some trouble that there's only one solution to, and Supes and Professor X, they don't have the stomach for it.

They don't like the idea that Logan and I have balls of steel and guts of iron, any more than we like it ourselves, but, when ya gotta send the good bad guy to do the dirty job, well, it's like good old John Wayne says.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

So put yourself in our places.

I'm Jack Napier's daughter. My father is the Dictator For Life of the Society of Supervillains. Bruce and Dick don't give me shit about it, and neither do Jon, or Laurie, and Clark's pretty decent about it too, and so's Pete Parker, because a lot of people think he's about two steps above the Old Man, but a lot of other masks, yeah, they look at me, they see the Old Man. They think I shouldn't be allowed to wear a mask at all, and fucking right they all look down on me.

I wish I was a proper mutant; I'd join the X-Men, none of them look down on me.

Sure, they think I'm nuts, but they don't look down on me.

But, I digress.

Not to mention, I may well be a fucking genius; Jon says I'm the only person he can work with that he doesn't have to speak to like they're a child. And yeah, my students, they think I'm pretty goddamn groovy, but smart though I may be, the comparisons to Tony Stark don't stick, because he's a real high class guy, and I'm your good old fashioned bar-brawling, pub-crawling, loudmouth Irish drunk.

What Sally Jupiter calls a Brooklyn Irish thug.

I got a real bad temper and I have a tendency to fuck the wrong kind of guys, not to mention that after I got some justice for a couple of them, I got an offer to join the local chapter of the Hell's Angels.

Only full female member in New York, that's me.

I took it, too.

Hey, what can I say, show me a bunch of freaks and outcasts who like to ride and drink and fight as much as I do, and what am I gonna say? No?

So, you can imagine with this kind of pedigree, I don't get invited to the best parties.

Or the best mask jobs.

But I don't give a fuck.

I been a freak and an outcast all my life; I don't mind being the superheroine for my own people.

But, my job is to put on a jumped-up boiler suit, a bulletproof vest, and a whole shitload of weapons and a mask and a pair of combat boots and truck my ass to places nobody in their right mind wants to live in or go to, not even the people who are stuck there, in order to meet up with the worst kind of deviant murderous criminal prick bastard assholes that everybody on God's Green Earth is terrified of, and either kill or beat the fuckin' shit out of these characters before they either kill or beat the fuckin' shit out of me.

Why?

So the aforementioned people who are being fucked over by these pricks can get something like peace of mind and justice.

The badguys, they typically get 5 to fifteen upstate, a few broken bones, or a trip to the morgue.

I get heartfelt thanks, and a whole lot of pain and suffering, and occasionally, a trip to the hospital.

There's no money in it, and not like I need money, but if I did, I wouldn't make it being the Harlequin, that's for damn sure.

And if you think my job sucks, at least I chose to do what I do.

Logan's job sucks worse than mine, and he didn't ask for it.

He's an innocent victim of circumstance.

His Ma, who was one of those high-class gently bred Victorian Englishwomen, took one look at her gardener, some mean, crazy, sawed-off drunken, half-civilised Black Irish mutant wild man over whom the veneer or civilisation was spread very thin and got completely cock struck.

I know the feeling.

And they got together and made nature's perfect killing machine, who was unlucky enough to actually be an honourable, intelligent and well-read hopeless romantic with a heart of gold. Which means Logan the gallant knight errant has to live cheek by jowl with Logan the insane fucking wild animal.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the world couldn't leave the poor man to live in peace and obscurity in the Great White North. The minute he poked his head out of his cabin to see what was doing in the 20th century, The Man got their hands on Logan and they haven't let him go, since.

You wanna talk about being victimised by the Establishment?

Talk to Logan, man.

He's been packed off to war, prodded, poked, cut up, mind-fucked, lied to, fucked around, exploited and otherwise completely screwed by every conceivable governmental agency in Canada and America until the poor bastard can't even remember what his own mother or the man who raised him looks like.

He only remembers his crazy son-of-a-bitch father because he feared and loved the dude equally because Old Black Tom was the scariest person Logan ever met in his life.

That and you don't forget the person who teaches you know to survive, especially not when you see him every time you look in the mirror.

It's a fucking crime, it really is, because, I mean, I think all Logan wants to do is find a nice girl with big tits who isn't too uptight and enjoys fucking, beer, hockey and English literature. I'll bet he'd like to get married and move to his little cabin in the snow and throw his chainsaw into in his old truck every day and go be a fucking lumberjack, or something. You know, hang out at the bar with his buddies and play pool and drink beer and raise a whole bunch of little mutants. I can see him, sitting on the porch reading a good book, telling them to watch those damn claws, if they break off you'll be sorry it'll take forever to grow back and just because you heal doesn't mean it don't hurt and get Daddy a beer.

But he doesn't get to do that, because his job is to be the fucking Wolverine, which is a pretty shitty job. First of all, it involves him taking large amounts of punishment and generally being put in situations where he's in some serious, unbelievable, excruciating pain. It also involves a certain amount of fucking hypocrisy, in which everybody tells to control himself, don't get mad, don't get upset, and don't hurt anybody.

That is, until its dollars-to-donuts time.

When the rubber meets the road.

Balls to the wall.

Then he has to put on the spandex and say "Grrrrrrrrrrr!" and kill a whole lotta buncha fucking badguys, but not before they shoot him in the face or blow him to kingdom come or rip some of his major bodily organs out.

Then, while he's bent over in horrible pain, attempting to pack his guts back into his belly because they're bursting out like snakes from a can of peanut brittle, covered in his own blood and that of all the dead people in a big pile, everybody looks shocked and appalled that he's just saved their lily white asses and they are not the ones who are up to their ankles in guts, and Cyclops gives him a lecture about being too goddamn violent.

Except Jean.

Logan tells me that when she gets a good look at him, uninjured, of course, wearing blood, claws and tattered spandex, she looks like she'd like to throw herself on his knees and suck him dry right in front of God and everybody.

I can appreciate that.

Don't get me wrong, I like Scott, he's an okay dude, but he's such can really be a sanctimonious prick. If it wasn't for the fact that he's my friend Jean Grey's old man, I'd go up there to the X-Institute and fuck him stupid, just to knock some of that stuffing out of his shirt, y'know what I mean?

Actually, that might do him some good.

Anyway, do those sound like jobs you'd want to do?

Of course not.

It probably makes you think that having to get up at five AM and put on a clean shirt and catch the bus or sit in traffic for two hours then spend eight hours doing a job they could get a monkey for is actually pretty groovy, by comparison.

So, imagine that you are in this green and beautiful place, in the middle of a very sunny and pleasant summer. You've got money, and time to stop and smell the roses. And you're with a reasonably attractive and engaging person of the opposite sex with whom you have become quite friendly, whom you've become pretty fucking hot for, and who is, incidentally, extremely interested in getting as much as much hot, dirty, nasty porno drive-in action with you as is humanly possible.

This generally results in both of you having copious amounts of intense and prolonged orgasms; the kind that would make Stalin believe in God.

Also, there is free beer.

Do you want to go back to work at the office?  
Fuck no!

How about going back to work wearing a Halloween costume to go and fight sadistic homicidal psychopaths by the shitload, at great personal cost to your own emotional and physical well-being, and although your are the heir to two great fortunes, spend the great majority of your free time drunk and beaten up and dazed in a one room flop over a bar in Bensonhurst, watching the late movie and trying to pour enough whiskey down your throat after getting a half-hearted screw from a stranger you already threw out, itch unscrached and still trying to put your tired, beaten body to rest, so you can get up and do it all over again tomorrow, except, tomorrow, maybe you'll get shot?

I know that was a run-on sentence.

Since the Brooklyn Slasher, my fucking life is an endless run-on sentence of cheap booze, cheap screws, cheap thrills, and less pleasantly, pain, misery, abuse and bullshit.

Tell me again why I want to go back to it?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

So, can you blame me and Logan for wanting to stretch out our vacation as long as we could., before we had to get back to reality?

I rest my case.

Anyway, on with the show.

Oh, and one more thing.

Okay, when I had my Troubles, I got a little outta hand, but, I always get outta hand with my Troubles, that's why they gotta name and it ain't just Tuesday, yunno?

But, do not let Logan give you some shit about how he was peacefully having a drink and I started all the trouble, and golly gee whillikers, all he did was try real hard to stop me from getting into bad trouble, honest, because that is bullshit.

Actually, it is unbelievable fucking bullshit.

In his sometimes angst-filled quest to show that he is a short, hairy, bull-necked Don Quixote the with claws, Logan occasionally attempts to omit the following obvious facts.

His mother may well have been a gently bred Victorian Englishwoman, but his father, who is still alive and well, is the Great- Great-Grandaddy of all the mean, bad, two-fisted old fashioned drunken Irish street-fighting bar brawlers in North America.

And Logan is a chip off the old block.

You show him a fucking shot and a beer, he only has to look at 'em, and he is all ready to start telling tall tales and lying about how much pussy he gets, and knock somebody's block right the fuck off.

Maybe it didn't start out to be his fight, but when the fight commenced, he was right in it.

He was all the fuck over it.

Yeah, maybe I killed like five of those dudes, but there were about thirty of them, and he killed like, nine or ten of them.

To be fair, he started out just hitting them and throwing their asses all around the joint, but they all had guns and knives and shit, and when they started shooting at him and stabbing him and shit, he got the claws out.

I mean, don't let him give you that, "Who, me?" shit.

I was there, I saw what went down, and no matter what he's trying to feed you in his Heap Big Chief Bullshit moments of existential revelation, don't ever let the man tell you that he doesn't consider fucking, fighting, beer and a good book the finest things on earth, except maybe for hockey.

Because when he does, he's lying.

**II: Logan**

As they drove through the suburbs of Toronto, Logan had something on his mind.

"You're pretty well read, Napalm. I assume you've heard of the Bushido code."

"I've heard of it. And read about it. But I'm no samurai, Logan. That's your department."

"Maybe not, kid, but you know a lot more about honor, respect and loyalty than a lot of men your age. Or twice your age. What does it really mean to you, when you say there's blood between us?"

"It's goddamn serious, that's what. As a scientist, I know blood is blood and we didn't exchange enough for it to mean anything, in that sense, but then again, blood is blood. You got a little bit of my blood in your veins, and I got a little bit of your blood in mine. People like us, we ain't innocent, we ain't clean, and we ain't decent. Blood is what we know, and it's all we got to swear in. And we swore to the only three things that really mean anything, in the long run. Like you said, honor, respect, and loyalty. Blood oath's the oldest oath there is. When your ancestors and mine were dancing around under the full moon around rings of standing stones, they understood that what the mind cannot know, the blood remembers. Most people have forgotten that. But not people like us. Our honour and our respect and loyalty to each other is the only shard of humanity we got. That's what's between us. Bound in blood. Forever."

Logan lit a fresh cigar and thought about what she said.

"What happens if one of us betrays the other?" he asked.

"We fight. Until one of us dies."

"And honour is satisfied?"

"Yeah. And so is the blood."

"I don't know, Liv. If you had the right training, and the right master, you might make some kind of samurai."

"Hey, that's the way I learned it in the street, man. That's all."

Considering the way they were living on the road, Logan had figured that once they arrived in Toronto, Liv was going to drive right through the ritzy part of town and park the car outside some flophouse in Chinatown, or maybe at the hostel in Kensington Market, despite the Bats' offer to use his penthouse.

Which didn't bother Logan.

He had some vague memories of sleeping on the street in Toronto for a few months when the only traffic came from horses, and after the war in the late forties and early fifties when the students and creative types and outcasts listened to jazz and smoked tea in the Market, some rather more distinct but still hazy recollections of having come down from the woods looking for a good time and spending some drunk and happy times at the hostel's predecessor.

He was fairly surprised, then, when the Harlequin pulled the Wildcat up right in front of the biggest, shiniest towering apartment building on the whole Lakeshore district, and a doorman and several lackeys came rushing out of the chrome and glass doors like the Queen of England was arriving for a visit.

One of them opened her door, and she just sailed right out, like she was to the manor born.

The doorman fell all over himself getting to her.

Well, even if his memory of it was fuzzy to nil, Logan was, quite literally, to the manor born, even if it was on the wrong side of the blanket, so he waited for the doorman to come around to his side.

If he was disturbed at the sight of the big, shaggy wolf-dog and the two dusty, sweaty disreputable-looking travellers, with mud and grass stains on their Levis he didn't show it at all.

Logan pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket, and the doorman lit it for him.

You would have thought they were the long-lost Tsar and Tsarina of all the Russias.

"Good afternoon, Miss Napier. We've had the penthouse cleaned and aired out for you, and the refrigerator, pantry and bar have been stocked to your specifications. Do you and the gentleman need assistance with your luggage?"

"Gentleman? Where? Oh, you mean Logan. Why not? The bags are in the trunk. Bring in the two knapsacks, and the duffel bag, only. Just make sure the car is parked in Mr. Wayne's private security spot. Head out. When I back out, I always trip the security alarms."

"We will see to it, Miss Napier."

"Thank you, Mr. Dixon. And what about that package from my banker in New York?"

"Mr. Thomas personally delivered the briefcase to our security chief this morning. You can claim it from his office on the way up."

"You're one in a million, Mr. Dixon. Thanks a lot."

Liv handed the doorman twenty dollars.

The doorman was a real pro, he didn't even give Wolverine a hint of a dirty look as he held the door open and said,

"Good afternoon, Mr. Logan."

"Same to you, I'm sure, Mr. Dixon."

Then they went to an office where a man in a suit handed Liv an aluminium briefcase, which she handed off to Logan.

"Watch this for me on the way up."

"How much is in here?" Logan asked.

"Ten large. I figured that would be enough for the cost of the operation. And for the Jesus Christly mess you an' me have made of our lives, these past few months. Lemme tellya somethin' that you prob'ly already know. People like is shouldn't take time off. It's our work that keeps us sane. Now, lemme tellya somethin' the Old Man taught me. When you've made a big fucking mess of things, ya gotta spread some money around, if ya wanna smooth it over. Ain't a lot of things a few gees here an' there won't straighten right the fuck out. Also, we're gonna be dealing with small-time junkie thugs, an we're gonna be wantin' them to talk, as opposed to just get the fuck out of the way. Fuckin' hard-core street junkies, ya can beat the fuck of of 'em like that an' they won't talk. They're like we are. Gettin' the shit beaten' out of 'em, that's just fuckin' Tuesday. They got no shame, no pain an' the only fear they have is not bein' able the score s'more dope. So ya gotta pay 'em. Buy informants. Shit like that. An' if I make a big enough mess, I might have to spread some dough around to the business owners, cops, maybe some low-level wiseguy types. Shit like that. Besides you need some bread, don'tcha?"

"Darlin', I ain't takin' your money."

"Bullshit, Logan! I'm fuckin' loaded, and I'm also fuckin' cheap, ya see the way I live mosta the time. God only knows, I'm such a fuckin' Brooklyn thug of a shanty Irish drunk, I spend mosta my time livin' in a flop over a bar in Bensonhurst, an' the only things I ever buy are booze, bullets an' fuckbooks. Ya wouldn't know I hadda fuckin' dime. I gotta bed everywhere I go. A cot at Jon's lab. A Murphy bed in my office at NYU. An' the flop. I live like a drunken shanty Irish bum without two fuckin' nickels to rub together, and I'll prob'ly die that way, so all my dough, it ain't doin' me no good. Take the fuckin' money. Give it to Charlie ta give to the little mutants at the school if you don't want it. Donate it to the VA. Buy some broad ya really wanna fuck who won't come across for youse somethin' real nice. Do whatcha want with it. I know it ain't all been sunsine and roses, ridin' with me. Take the fuckin' money."

"Depends on how this operation goes." He said.

Liv used a key to unlock a private elevator beside the bank of elevators, which opened up into an extremely lavish penthouse apartment.

The living room alone was bigger than most of the places Logan had lived in for the past fifty years.

"I almost forgot how much fucking money the Bat has. You got one of those showers that has the water coming from six different directions and a bathtub big enough for four people with steps leading up to it, one of those joints?"

"Sure do. In both bathrooms. One has a whirlpool in it, too. This place is laid out, man. Bruce has even got a smaller version of the Batcave in a secret room, so if we have any trouble finding Slim, I can always link up to Bruce's system."

"So, you decided to stay her for professional reasons?"

"Sorta. Ya know, I ain't slept in my own bed since…well, its' been a lot longer than since I left with Slim. I missed sleepin' in my own bed, and bein' in my own place, yunno? I got the same kinda bed here as I do in New York in my rooms, and I gotta extra costume here and some shit like that."

Liv was grinning from ear to ear.

"You should see the look on your face." She said.

"You sure this motherfucker we're lookin' for ain't going anywhere?"

"I'm sure."

"Good. Because I wanna get a little bit of me all over this place."

Logan dropped his knapsack on the large wrap-around rectangular sofa and made a beeline for the bar.

He had a good stiff drink of hundred year old Scotch, and sat with his knapsack.

Bruce Wayne also had a really big TV, which he had to hold off on getting to, because Liv got on the phone.

**III: Liv**

Now, on occasion, there will be something that Bruce taught me that goes right along with what I learned at the Old Man's knee, and one of those things is the need for careful planning.

Like the Old Man says, morons don't plan to fail, they fail to plan.

So, as we got close to Toronto, I had already started running some scenarios in my mind; that's' why I called my banker to get some of my bread on hand and in cash.

Before we got this thing with Slim straightened out, there were some loose ends bothering me that I had to get tied up.

So, while Logan had a drink, well, yeah, I also had a drink, but I got on the phone and called Jean at the X-Mansion

"Hey man, its noon what the hell are you doing in your room, yet?"

"I'm having lunch."

"Oh. Lunch, huh? So, is One-Eye there?"

"Yes. Scott and I are having lunch together."

"I see. What are you havin' for lunch?"

"Very funny, Napalm. Not that I wouldn't do it, but is there some point to this phone call, other than your usual 8th grade bullshit?"

"Yeah. Me an' Logan, we're makin' a plan for finishin' up my business, here and comin' back to the States, an' we gotta take care of all these loose ends. Lemme talk to him"

Jean handed the phone over, and Cyke says "hello" to me like I'm Magneto.

"Hiya, Cyke. It's Napalm. How the fuck are you?"

"Uh…fine? Where's Logan? Did something horrible happen?"

"Of course not! He's right here, an' everybody's alive and in one piece. We're in TO, now and I just wanted to know how your truck was doing. Those pencil-pushin' bastards total it?"

"Yeah. And it was brand new, and I'm not as loaded as you and Bruce Wayne."

"Yeah, I know that. You still got it?"

"I'm trying to find somebody who will fix it, and take payments."

"Well, I'll fix it, and you don't hafta pay me. Like you said, I'm loaded. Tellya whatcha do. Youse call (212) 585-7000, Mason's Auto Repairs, an' ask for Joe Mac. Tell I said ta drive the wrecker up to get your truck, an' put it in one of the back bays, I'll be down to fix it in about three weeks."

"Isn't that the former Nite Owl's garage?"

"Yeah. You shoulda called them first. You bein a mask an' all, Hollis mighta fixed it for youse on the cheap, anyways. Between me an' Joe an, Hollis', we could make the fuckin' Titanic seaworthy, again. You can tell Charlie I'm fine, Logan's fine, everybody's fine, an' well be back in about three weeks."

"Napalm, why do you want to fix my truck for free?"

"Why not? Us masks, we gotta stick together, right? Besides, I owe Logan. I gotta go. Oh, and one more thing, Cyke?"

"Yes."

"I think Jean wants ta have you for dessert. You know what you gotta do, cowboy."

I hung up the phone, and Logan was laughing his ass off, because, it's fairly well known that ol' Cyke is pretty strait-laced.

Anyway, I went into the bedroom to make the next call, also to the X-Mansion, to tie up another loose end.

"It's your nickel, man." Says the voice on the other line.

I had certain preconceived notions about this Mel chick until Logan tells me that she and Yukon Mel, who used to ride with the Angels out of Frisco are the same chick.

Now I have never met Yukon Mel, but I know her by reputation, like she knows me, and Mel is a double mutant, in addition to the powers Logan told me about, she's got superhuman strength.

So I decide to quiz this chick and see if she is who she says she is, because word on the street is that Yukon Mel OD'd in 1968, or thereabouts.

"Sure is, sister. This is Napalm, outta the New York chapter. I been ridin' with your Old Man this summer. Now, I'm not tryin' to take over your action, but I'll be around, Wednesdays. It's blood between us, now. So, what's the story with you splittin' on him? Things get too rough for you?"

"Hey, man, you can check up on me with Gypsy, outta the Frisco chapter, I'm cool, I wouldn't just split on my Old Man. There's no too rough for me. Man, I'm a real one percenter. It was a real bad scene. I did it for his own good, man. Did Logan tell you about my powers?"

"Yeah. And he told me he thought he could take it."

"Yeah, well, I never shoulda bought it, but, I mean, I went two years without a man, so I wasn't thinkin' right."

"Two years! Fuck! If I had to go two years without getting laid, I'd be on top of a water tower with two machine guns, a rifle, and a fucking bazooka."

She laughed.

"Well, dig, you been to the West Coast?"

"Some."

"Well, back in 69, I was in this shitbox motor in just outside Needles with Gypsy. You know Gypsy?"

"I've heard of him."

"Yeah, well, the older I got, the worse my powers were getting and it was getting hairy. So, we ran outa beer and smokes, so I took a ride up the road to get some more, and when I came back he'd cut his own throat. Shit got that fucked up. I couldn't even leave the man for a half-hour. If he wasn't a mutant, he woulda died. He almost did. After that I swore off men, I couldn't even get within six feet of one of 'em. Then Charlie started showin' me how to control my powers, and you know Logan. He makes it sound like nothin' can ever hurt him, no way, no how. Things got bad, dig?"

"I heard."

"Yeah, well, we really fucked up. By the time we hit the place I split from, the truck was wrecked and I was so fucked up the whole trip, I still don't know which one of us wrecked it. An' Logan was gettin' crazy. Real fuckin' crazy. Pacin' the rooms, wanderin' around outside, havin' this crazy look in his eye like he does when he's gonna fuck somebody up. Anyway, just like with Gypsy, we run outa beer and smokes an' I said I'd go out an' get some more, an Logan, he fuckin' jumps up outa bed an' pins me to the wall and out come the claws an, I almost pissed myself, because I was lookin' in his eyes and there was nobody home."

"Jesus." I said.

"It was my powers. He could take it better than other dudes, but it was breakin' his mind. So he holds one claw against my throat, and I feel a little blood comin' down my neck, and he tells me I had better come back, fast, because if I don't, he's gonna cut me up so nobody will ever look at me again, but him. Now, you know that wasn't Logan talking. So, I waited on him to fall asleep, and I split. Not because I was worried about me, because I was worried about him, I mean, I pretty much fucked his brains out. I wasn't gonna even come back here, so I sent his bag home. I figured he's take a few days goin' cold turkey an' just come back. I guess it took him a lot longer to get past that shit."

"I don't think it was you he's been tryin' to get past. So, you two straightened your shit out?"

"Yeah. We're cool. Charlie says I'm makin' good progress at this point I have my powers totally under control so that shit will never happen, again."

"Yeah, well, what if you squeeze him too hard?"

"Logan? He can take it. I don't think he even realises I have fuckin' superhuman strength. We broke down in the winter, drivin' my bus, blew a tire and Logan said he'd change it, right. Well, the jack slipped and the van almost fell on him and I caught it. I'm fuckin' holding a goddamn bus up while he changes the tire, and you know what he says to me? Thanks."

I just laughed.

Sounded like it was Yukon Mel to me.

"Okay. He'll be home in about three weeks. You'll be seein' me around on Wednesdays, but I ain't movin' in on him."

"You got your Old Man at home?"

"Naaah. I found a big enough bastard, but he ain't found me. Yet. So, I'll seeya round. Take 'er easy."

"Yeah. Sure."

So, with my phone calls finished, and satisfied that Yukon Mel and Logan really did just have a misunderstanding and I wasn't going to have to do anything crazy, I went back into the main room to lay my plan out to Logan.

It went kinda like this.

So, the way I had it figured, the way news travels, Slim had to at least have heard that I was alive, and I was coming for him…and I had hooked up with Wolverine somewhere along the way. Which meant he had to be completely shitting himself, and when he heard that I was in Toronto, and I was spreading the word around I'd be done with him and back in New York in three weeks, well, he'd start shitting himself in all the colours of the rainbow.

So, I figured that if he knew I was in town, with Logan and that we weren't coming after him, he'd relax.

Maybe he'd figure I was cock struck, maybe he'd figure he was too small time for me to worry about, maybe he'd figure I was having too much of a good time to worry about his ass, but, after three weeks was gone and Logan and I disappeared from the scene, Slim would breathe a big sigh of relief and poke his head out of his hidey-hole.

And I would be there with a sledgehammer.

Ready to play Whack-A-Junkie.

Besides, as it turns out, I had bigger fish than Slim to fry.

**III: Bruce**

"The thing about Trivelino is, you never can tell, Dick."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I have a feeling I know what your sister is up to; it's probably all bait and switch. She's trying to lure MacLeod into a false sense of security before pouncing on him, but it's not like Liv to waste time and energy on hatching a complicated plot just to ensnare some junkie. I expected her and Logan to pull Slim off the street, see if he had any of her money left, then kill him in a gruesome way, and dump his body somewhere that would tend to show Toronto not to cross the Harlequin."

"That does sound more like Liv. Do you thing there's something more to it?"

"There has to be! She promised everyone she would be home in three weeks, three weeks has gone by and, nothing. No word from Toronto, at all. And there she and Wolverine are, holed up in an air-conditioned penthouse apartment in a building that has an indoor pool in a glass sunroom on the top floor, stocked to the gills with food and booze, not to mention a TV the size of the Rock of Gibraltar and a bed the size of a small South American country. They're not even looking for this junkie bastard. I called her and asked her why she wasn't doing anything, and she made up a veritable parade of bullshit excuses. I can hear the TV in the background, and bedsheets rustling, and Logan laughing at whatever's on TV. This dangerous criminal who shot her and left her to die is out there, somewhere., and she and Wolverine are drunk at noon, still in bed together, watching TV and laughing at re-runs of _The Real McCoys_? That's not like Liv, at all."

"You mean she actually sleeps in the same bed with him? That's a big step forward for Liv."

"Dick, focus! This McLeod scumbag tried to kill her. Besides, it's all very well and good for Logan, he has long since made his reputation. He's the goddamn Wolverine. If he wants to take some time off and fool around in his native land with some crazy girl from New York who thinks he's made out of ice cream, that's fine. But Liv's still trying to make her reputation, and she does good work, but it gets overshadowed by the crazy things she does. Doesn't she realise what it's doing for her reputation that she's letting the man who shot her and left her to die roam around free while she shacks up with Wolverine and Jack Daniels?"

Dick frowned.

"And then she's baiting you on the phone. Either she's got something planned, and she wants you to go up to Toronto and read her the riot act, or she's been distracted by, uh, getting more involved with Logan than she usually gets with a man, and she needs you to read her the riot act."

"Exactly."

"So, I take it we're going to Toronto, then?"

"First thing in the morning. At five. Sharp."

Batman and Robin, in their civilian identities as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, arrived at the penthouse at noon.

It was Bruce's apartment, so he had they key.

The living room and the kitchen were tidy, but that was not surprising.

Liv wasn't a neat freak, but she liked to keep things clean and tidy; that came from having two Irish cleaning ladies as mother figures.

It was obvious no one was awake, so, after putting an ear to the door to make sure things were quiet, Bruce dramatically burst into the bedroom.

Liv really was in bed with Logan, lying next to him, sleeping peacefully, and when Bruce burst in, Wolverine sat up, claws extended on one hand, shielding Liv close against his chest with the other.

Dick was right, this was a big step forward for Liv.

"Bruce? What the hell are you doin' here!"

"Us? What the hell are you doing in bed with my sister! When Bruce said he wanted you to help her with some of her problems, he wasn't inviting you to just help yourself!" Dick snapped.

The thing about Dick was, he was very strait-laced.

He made Scott Summers look like Jim Morrison, by comparison.

Bruce had actually thought he was gay, for awhile, and said nothing about it, but as it turned out he was just very strait-laced.

Strait-laced, and, like most big brothers, very protective of his little sister, no matter how wayward she was.

Liv woke up, slowly.

When she saw them, all she did was smile and roll over, reaching for a bottle of whiskey on the end table.

Logan looked embarrassed.

At least he had the decency to be mortified.

"What the hell is this? Trivelino, the man who tried to kill you is still out there! Even if you don't care about finding him, what about what remains of your reputation as a mask? Or are you too cock-struck to care!" Bruce demanded.

Dick looked like he might pass out, and Logan got upset.

He got out of bed, and put on his pants.

"Wait a minute, Wayne! We can go out and get that punk asshole any time we want. You think you piss in the deep, dark and dirty end of the pool? Out where me and Napalm swim, even if the water was clear you'd never be able to see the bottom! I don't think you realise somethin'. When we lit out for the brush, neither one of us had any intention of comin' back. Dead or alive. It's blood between your stepdaughter and me, now, this ain't just about takin' a trip an' shackin' up. Not that there's anythin' wrong with that, is there?"

"Not for you, Weapon X. You're reputation's made. But Liv's isn't. And between the two of you, you're helping her make her a lovely reputation as a shanty Irish drunk who's brain shuts off the minute she opens her legs!" Batman countered

"Bruce!" Dick gasped.

_**SNIKT!**_

"Maybe you oughta make fuckin Bat-tracks, bub!" Logan snarled.

"Maybe you oughta get your cracker ass out of my daughter's bedroom, before I shove those pig-stickers somewhere you're not going to enjoy!" Bruce snarled back.

"Liv! Do something!" Dick insisted.

"Not now, Dick. I'm havin' a drink." Liv said, laughing drunkenly.

"You know what? Forget it. It's not worth it. And it's not your fault, Logan. You're not the first man to get stuck in the quagmire of quicksand that is my wayward man-trap of a stepdaughter! Now you listen to me, Trivelino! You get your happy ass out on that street and start doing your job by the end of this week, or you can stay with Mr. Personality, 1895, here! As for you, Logan, you want her? You keep her. It won't take you three months to come crying to me, begging me to take her back in. And if she blows this, so help me God, I will not!"

Batman scribbled and address on a piece of paper, and threw it at Logan's feet.

"Better yet, that is where the Joker lives. You call him! Let him clean up this mess! I wash my hands of it!"

Bruce angrily stomped out of the apartment.

Which left it to Dick to stalk up to Logan and sucker punch him square in the face.

Good old Robin, he had one hell of a right hook, and Logan was on his ass, with blood dripping down his lip from his nose.

He let it go.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself! She's only twenty years old and she's a drunk! Guys like you preying on my little sister make me sick! I'll be back in a week, too, to come and get my sister, regardless of what Bruce says! You had better let her go, or claws or no claws, mister, or it won't go well for you!"

He stomped out of the room after Bruce.

Liv waited until she was sure they were both gone, before she started to laugh.

"I'm glad you think it's funny!"

"That worked like a charm, Logan! Now it's time for Phase Two. Wash your face, an' let's get dressed, we got work to do."

"You were right, Bruce."

Dick looked through the binoculars.

"There they go, they're going out the front door and Liv looks neither drunk, nor sleepy. They're not in costume, so anybody else would think they were just going out to get more beer, but I can see by the way her combat vest hangs that Liv's got her guns on. They're going to work. Geez, I guess I shouldn't have punched Logan out. What did he mean, it's blood between them?"

"He probably means that he and your sister swore a blood oath on each other. Something they're both likely to take very seriously."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Anything and anyone that diverts your sister from the road to ruin she's hell bent to drive herself down is good. Now, we can't follow them. Liv would sniff us out, figuratively, and Wolverine, he'd sniff us out, literally. And it's no use going in and snooping around; I trained Liv better than that. We're just going to have to trust her."

"Are we going back to New York, then?"

"Yes. If we don't, it will make whatever she has planned look wrong. We'll watch her from home."

"Bruce, what kind of blood oath?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"No."

"Me neither."

**III: Liv**

If Logan was surprised that we got picked up on a busy streetcorner, at the corner of Spadina and Dundas, right in the middle of Chinatown, in a big black car, and ended up sitting across a desk from Nick Fury, he didn't act like it.

"How's that shoulder, Agent Napier?"

"Not too bad, Mr. Director."

"Glad to hear it. Before you leave this facility, I'm still having one of our doctors check you out. Good working bringing my rogue agent in, Logan."

"It was my pleasure, Nick."

"Yeah. I'll bet. Now, it just so happens that this small-time sunnuvabitch who tried his best to blow you to hell, is hooked into some big-time sons of bitches, who are smuggling dope of all varieties over the border. I want you to do two things. I want you to turn him; he's going to rat up, and tell me who his bosses are. That means I don't want him dead. Beaten within an inch of his miserable life, maimed, and scarred for life, fine. You're going to bring the murderous, cowardly little junkie prick in, and I am going to either put him to work on the street in New York, singing like a stool pigeon, or I will wrap him up with a bow and send him direct to Vietnam, to Col. Edward Morgan Blake, USMC Special Forces with a special message that says "Cannon Fodder". Then, I want you two to do the voodoo that you do so well. I want these, no offence, Logan, Canuck sons of bitches to think twice about smuggling shit into my country. We're cleared with the military, the top brass, the RCMP, and the Canadian government, so there's no need for you to spare the horses. I want this drug operation crushed. Terminated. With extreme prejudice. I want public, I want messy, I want the survivors to be crying and pissing their pants for at least the next six months, and for the rest of their lives if they so much as see your pictures in the newspaper. Am I clear?"

"Like a fuckin' chandelier, Mr. Director." I said.

"Watch your mouth, Agent Napier. And Logan's your superior on this mission, so don't get half-crocked and go off half-cocked."

"Yes sir." I said.

"Alright. Now, keeping in mind you're the junior partner, here, Agent Napier, are there any of your usual diabolical plans percolating in that big brain of yours?"

"Well, I was thinking of making the issue with Slim look like Liv Napier's private grudge, and doing the rest of the deal in costume as the Harlequin."

"I like it. What about you, Logan?"

"Sounds like a good idea. Vacation's over."

_Snikt!_

"Time to get back to work."

Logan, he's got a way with words.

**IV: Logan**

The operation was going in three phases.

I: Get Slim

II: Get intelligence on who he's working for, and make a plan to publicly take them out.

III: Unleash hell.

Logan wasn't surprised that if Nick wanted it to go bad and bloody that we has in, but was Napalm really that tough?

Obviously, he knew she could get mad and killkillkill, but was she up to a high-level Black Ops-style mission, in the shape she was in?

He returned from a beer run to find her, with a blanket on the living room floor, and an armoury laid out in front of her, systematically cleaning and checking her weapons.

Watching the way she did it, as a battle-trained, battle-hardened, battle-tested commando, he figured the answer was probably you bet.

Napalm wasn't Slim MacLeod.

No matter what shape she wa sin, she could always do her job.

One Thompson submachine gun.

A cartridge box of bandoliers of thirty-aught-six bullets, and a cartridge box containing at least three drums filled with same.

One Buck hunting knife, with case.

One adamantium machete, walnut handle, with case.

Matching custom Colt officer-issue Navy .45 automatic pistols, nickel plated, with pearl inlaid grips.

Several boxes of .45 calibre ammo.

Full metal jackets, and hollow points.

One standard World War II GI-Issue bulletproof vest.

One leather and canvas gunbelt, with bullets.

One utility belt, festooned with several interesting-looking gizmos.

One pair vintage GI-Issue jump boots.

One ankle holster.

One snub-nosed.45 calibre Smith and Wesson revolver.

One pair of yellow and purple marksman's gloves.

One yellow and purple checked canvas boiler suit, one yellow and purple mask, one jester's cowl with bullets on the ends instead of bells.

Liv was squatting on the floor, wiping gun oil off her hands when Logan returned, absently fiddling with her dog tags that had her lucky bullet strung on them.

"Tear gas." She said.

"What?" Logan asked.

"Fucking tear gas. When Pop was here, I should have got some tear gas. No, Mr. Blake's in Vietnam, can't call him. Fuck it. I'll call Nick. Tell him I need tear gas. And maybe a few grenades. And a little C-4. What's a party without a little C-4, huh?"

She chuckled to herself.

Logan didn't know why it took him so long for it to hit him, but, Jesus, Napalm was a real serious mask.

She continued her conversation with herself, as some evil genius Dr. John O'Rourke "Crazy Jack" Napier kind of plan played out in her head.

"Fuck it. Nick will start on me, blah, blah, what do you need tear gas for? And C-4? I dunno. Maybe because you send me an' Logan to do a fucking twenty man job, single-handedly. Fuck it. Where's that bracelet? Wait. Let me get dressed."

Liv put on her jump boots, tucking in her Levis, and put on all of her belts and weaponry, then her dog tags and combat vest.

She went into her bedroom, and came back with an old World War II helmet on, and started fiddling with the bracelet she always wore.

"Grab hold of my arm. We're goin' to 'Nam."

Before the word "what" could escape Logan's lips, there was a bright blue light and a whoosh of wind, and he and Liv were standing outside a bar in Saigon that Eddie practically lived in when he wasn't on a mission.

It was the last place Logan had seen him, at the end of his tour.

They were met by Dr. Manhattan.

He looked…worried.

Definitely worried.

"You two are working together, now? What are you doing here? What did you do? Who did you kill?"

"Relax, Jon. I didn't do nothin' bad. I just need some supplies for a mission. I gotta see Mr. Blake? Is he in there?"

"Mr. Blake?"

"Sorry. Colonel Blake."

The Doc gave her and odd look.

"Where else would he be?"

Liv took a quick look around, hands on her guns and walked into the bar.

"Why did you bring her here?" Dr. Manhattan insisted to Logan.

"Why did you?" Logan rejoined.

The whole war zone scene didn't seem to bother Liv, and she casually walked up to the bar like it was no big deal.

"I'll have whatever he's having. Hiya, Mr. Blake. How's business?"

Eddie did a double take.

"What the fuck! Kid, what the fuck are you doing here? Did youse kill the wrong guy an' they sent ya to me instead of jail? You better enjoy that fuckin' drink, it's gonna be your last. You ain't pullin' your drunken psycho shit on me, here, soldier. I know what you been up to the past year, and I've they've sent you ta me to straighten your assout, don't worry, I will."

"Relax, Eddie. Me and Logan, we're workin' on somethin' for Nick, an' I need some shit I'm afraid he'll give me trouble on."

"Good. You shouldn't be here." Eddie said, and slugged down his drink.

Logan sat down on Eddie's other side.

Eddie slammed him on the back, and laughed.

"First travellin' with the kid, Jimmy, an' now you're workin' with her, too? You're in a world of shit. She's fuckin' crazy."

"I know. I was safer here."

"What kinda supplies are we talking about?"

Logan shrugged, lit a cigar and pointed at Liv.

"Ask General MacArthur."

Liv took a piece of paper out of her pocket.

"Drug ring. Smack. Not a real big time operation, but Mr. Fury wants us to make it public and gruesome. Put the fear of God into these scumbags."

The door opened, and a scent came in that made Logan's hair stand on end.

"Hey there, runt. Tell me you're here to finish my tour."

"No chance, Creed. I'd think you'd like this kinda war."

"Nobody likes this fucking war." the Comedian commented.

"What the Sarge said. Hey, there, Red. Sarge, here's the girl who stole my heart. Literally. An' it may have grown back, but I'm telling ya, Red, you still got my heart in your hand. Lemme buy you a whole buncha drinks. We'll let bygones be bygones."

"Ain't there some prisoner you should be torturing, Vic?" she asked.

"Naaah. Bores me. These goddamn gooks, they're so fragile. Ya put your hands on one of them, and he comes apart like a stewed chicken."

"Don't they all." Liv replied, drolly.

Creed just laughed.

Logan didn't like the look Liv shot at Victor Creed, it was an unpleasant look as the thought darted across her mind that if he wasn't the enemy of her blood brother, and even if he was, she could always kill him twice, after, maybe kill him for good and all.

His suspicion that maybe before Liv met him, she had met Vic Creed, on some dark and bloody night, was ever increasing.

He was about to say something, but he didn't get the chance.

"Hey, Vic, among the nasty things the kid did to you, did she ever cut your balls off while you was still breathin', and stuff 'em down your gullet?" Eddie asked, conversationally.

Now, the Comedian was probably the only human being that made Sabretooth nervous, and he looked a little bit unsettled, all the sudden.

"Hey, Sarge, if it's like that."

"It's like that, Vic. You see me sittin' on one side of this kid, an' Jimmy on the other? That don't leave a lot of room for you. Get it?"

"Yeah. I get it."

"Good. Now, siddown. Have a drink. We'll forget the whole thing. Right, kid?"

"Sure. I got no beef with Vic, right now. Besides, I'm here on business."

"Business?" Sabretooth inquired.

"Business. Okay, Eddie, I need…one case of tear gas canisters, one case of grenades, and a standard-size brick of C-4. And a maybe a coupla belts of…you need somethin' chief? Because I'm workin'?"

Eddie and Logan both looked amused at the half-crocked soldier who had placed his hand on Liv's ass.

"Bub, you just fucked yourself." Logan laughed.

"Royally." The Comedian added.

"She'll rip your fuckin' heart out." Sabretooth said.

"Workin'? How much?" the soldier asked.

"Uh-huh. Real funny. I'm on a fuckin' mission, heah, chief. Go take your fuckin' money an' pay it to somebody who's in the fucking business. Me, I'm in the justice business, an' I got a schedule to meet."

"You? You're just some chick. What the fuck are you gonna…"

Logan wasn't sure what the rest of the cocky young man's parting salvo was going to be, because Napalm punched him in the stomach with one hand, and shoved one of those gleaming .45's into the grunt he made with the other.

"Is this yours, Colonel Blake?"

"Why no, kid. Be my fuckin' guest. Move your beer, Jimmy. It ain't gonna tastes so good with alla that blood in it."

"Listen to me, grunt. If you wanna go home an' kiss your girl who's been blowin' sailors while you was gone with that dirty mouth of yours, ya better listen up, Romeo. You got till three to fuck off, and then I start firing, until your whole head is blown off my gun. I'm workin', heah! I ain't in the fuckin' mood!"

The soldier made his exit.

"Where was I? Oh, yeah. An' a coupla belts of thirty-aught sixes. I'm thinkin' I might hafta, yunno, take out some cars. Maybe a small building."

"I see. You ever done anything like this, kid?"

"Not on my own. Well, only as a training exercise. But, with Bruce, sure. Look, Logan's in charge. I'm sure you and him usedta blow Nazis and shit up. Tanks, bridges, barracks. Shit like that."

Logan could tell that Eddie really wanted to laugh.

You could just see the wheels in Napalm's great big brain spinning, her eyes alight with glee at the idea of blowing up a building.

Jack Napier's little girl.

"Maybe a bridge?" Creed interjected.

"Yeah. A whole fuckin' bridge! Fuck me, I'm gonna need s'more C-4. Hey! My fuckin' glass is empty, down heah!"

Eddie chuckled.

"Vic, don't fuckin' encourage her. Kid, you're a real chip of the old block. Okay, where ya doin' this?"

"Toronto."

"What? You ain't in the US? Well, fuck it! Yeah, sure, why not. Have the Doc send youse home, kid, and I'll have him send Jimmy back with the supplies. But listen, kid. Don't go blowin' up any of their national shit, yunno?. Ya don't wanna get Jimmy kicked outa his own country, because Napiers an' C-4 don't mix."

"Jimmy? How come you keep callin' him Jimmy."

"That's his name, kid. Now, make tracks."

"But…"

"But the last fuckin' thing I need here in this shithole is you, kid. Blowin' up bridges and crazy shit. Gettin' drunk, bangin' Vic and tearing pieces off him when you're sober enough to remember you fuckin' hate him. Tryna crawl up my leg, gettin' me tangled up in your burnin' bush so I ain't payin attention' to my fuckin' job an' I get myself an' my whole command killed. You seem like you're in better shape than I heard you was, but you still ain't combat ready, kid. Get goin'. I'll be seein' youse in New York."

"But…"

"But, my ass! An' if you get caught with the C-4, you go ahead an tell 'em who gave it to you, and I said they can come to New York when I get back, an' kiss my ass in the middle of the Brooklyn fuckin' Bridge. So, get goin' kid! Now."

"Okay, Eddie. I guess I'll seeya in New York."

"You will. You ain't gettin' off this easy."

Liv looked disappointed, but she split, and neither Eddie nor Logan, nor Victor Creed breathed until the flash of blue light told them she was safely thousands of miles away.

"Vic, didja see that? She listened to him. She always listens to him."

Logan was so thunderstruck he forgot to hate Sabretooth for a few moments.

"I saw, Jimmy. I can't believe what I saw. Sarge, she fuckin' listened to you. I tried to tell her somethin', once, an' she knocked me out with a hook and sawed off all my limbs but my right arm."

_Snikt!_

"I shoulda known. That looked like a grudge to me! You motherfucker!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, Jimmy! Put the fuckin' hardware away, I'm tryna have a drink! Look, she got me out of a jam with the C of H, I bought her a beer, she bought me a beer, it was a cold night, she had a room over the bar. We bought each other a few more beers on two, maybe three other nights that winter, I took one of her cars when she was drunk and wrecked it, then I gave her lip, and she went after me with a chainsaw. Jimmy, Jesus, if you intend to gut every guy who's ever travelled that path, shit, you're gonna be a real busy man." Sabretooth protested.

"If you know what's fuckin' good for you, Creed, you'll stay the fuck away from her."

"I already know that, Jimmy. I heard that from the Sarge. Now, what was I sayin'? Oh, yeah. Sarge, you mind tellin' me why she listens to you?"

The Comedian shrugged.

"Maybe she has respect for me because I never laid cock to her, wiped my dick on the curtains an' left. I dunno. I known the kid all her life. I knew her Ma. I know her Pop. An' her stepfather. She looks up to me. I guess she's used to listenin' to me, that's all."

Dr. Manhattan came and sat at the bar.

"She's safe. I need a drink."

"Why the fuck did you bring the kid here, Jon? When I saw her roll in, I almost had about six fuckin' heart attacks."

"I thought it might be like you said. That she did something unspeakable on one of her binges and they sent her here to you for a tour of duty instead of to prison."

"She did do something unspeakable on her last binge. It was to some real scumbags, though." Logan told them.

"Good. Because that's the last thing I need. The kid, drunk and loaded for bear, in a fucking war zone. You and me both could go home. Now listen to me, Jimmy. I known that kid her whole life. Ya gotta keep her on a short leash. Watch her booze, an' keep her busy. An' I don't mean doin' crossword puzzles."

"She keeps me, busy, Eddie."

Logan looked guilty and Victor laughed at him.

"Yeah. I'll bet. Ya look tired. What did I say to Vic, I'm sittin' on one side, and you're sittin' on the other, right? Hell, anybody knows the kid's got an eye for me. She looks at me like I got sunshine an' rainbows comin' outa my fly. Nice kid. Smart kid. She might get a wild hair layin' across her as sthe wrong way and shoot me in the head, someday, but fuck it. Ya gotta go sometime. I mean, I'm not indestructible, like you are."

"After this mission, Eddie, only on Wednesdays. I'm not that indestructible."

"Never in a million years, and I am that indestructible." Dr. Manhattan added.

"Shit, Jimmy, since when do you have no balls? She already killed me, coupla times, an', fuck, I don't care how many times she fuckin' kills me. It'd be worth it." Sabretooth decided.

"It ain't a matter of balls, Vic. Most guys don't want to get too heavily involved with a woman who could snap and kill them at any time." Logan explained.

"I dunno. I'm still seein' Sal, now and again. Me, I'm used to it." The Comedian joked.

Everybody had a laugh on that one, and then Dr. Manhattan sent Logan back to Toronto before Liv could blow large portions of it up.

After Liv was satisfied with her armoury, they put Phase I into place.

It was pretty simple.

They drove to Kensington Market, parked the car in front of the European Meats deli, and walked two blocks to a bar, where they sat down at the bar.

The bartender recognised Logan, and Liv, and he turned a whiter shade of pale.

"Let's give him the ol' heavy metal." Liv suggested.

"Good idea, darlin'."

_Snikt!_

Liv pulled the adamantium machete.

"You two know each other?"

"Like goes with like, bub." Logan snarled, baring his pointy canines.

"I want Slim McLeod. Give him up, or we're going paint this shithole blood red." Liv threatened, capping her threat with one of her Joker chuckles.

"He's upstairs. Came back here after word had it you split. Same room as before. I don't want no trouble."

"Don't worry. I'll send somebody to clean up when we're done." She said.

They stormed up the stairs.

Logan kept thinking about Napalm, lying in a pool of blood and broken glass, dragging herself down the side of the road, dying, alone and in pain, far from anybody who loved her.

"You gonna leave some of this punk for me, darlin'?"

"And they say chivalry is dead. Sure, I will."

Liv kicked the door in.

It was a filthy flop, bare but for a chair, a table, a bed, and a TV on a stand.

There was a man sitting at the table, in a filthy t-shirt and greasy Levis, and on the table was a Saturday Night special, and a strongbox, with money in one side and caps of cheap street skag in the other.

His blond hair was lank, and greasy, and there wasn't that look of badness or meanness on his on his stubbly young face, just desperation, and hooded, haunted eyes.

The resignation melted out of them in fear when the door opened, and he froze.

"Hello, baby. Mama's home."

**V: Liv**

Slim didn't go for the gun.

I'm not sure why.

Too scared, I expect.

Or maybe it was the two .45's I already had in my hands, pointed at his head.

He looked at me, and then he looked at the actual goddamn Wolverine, claws and all, and I thought the poor stupid son of a bitch was going to piss himself.

It was kind of like killing a mosquito with a flamethrower.

I almost felt sorry for him, then a twinge in my shoulder recalled to mind the broken glass, the blood, and the pain and fear.

"Liv? You're still alive? Listen, I can explain."

I put my guns away, and got his, and carefully unloaded it, putting the bullets in my pocket.

"I'm listening." I said, calmly.

"I was strung out. And I really needed the bread."

Wrong answer.

I reached over the table and hauled Slim's long, skinny body across it, and threw him on the floor in a heap of knees and elbows.

He was always a lanky guy, but heroin had turned him into Jack Pumpkinhead.

I gave him a good kick in the ribs, hauled him up, bloodied his mouth with another quick shot, and I shook him so hard I made his teeth champ together.

"You motherfucker! We was buddies! I kept your skinny junkie ass alive! I woulda given youse the fuckin' money! What the fuck is the matter with you? An' don't tell me you're a fuckin' junkie! I'm a fuckin' gutter drunk, same thing, an' I don't shoot my friends and leave 'em to die!"

I hit him again, bloodied his nose.

Slim started to cry, snot and blood running out of his nose, over his puffy lip, and I couldn't keep hitting him, he was too pathetic.

I tossed him at his chair.

"Please, Liv, don't kill me. Don't kill me, man! Like you said, we was buddies. You knocked me around a little, a few times, but it wasn't nothin' serious. You can't help yourself when you're drunk any more'n I can when I'm strung out. Look, I don't know why I did it. Shot you. Took the money. I was so high, I didn't know what I was doin'. I'm glad you ain't dead. I am. I been thinkin' about you. The way I left you to die. It's been eatin' me alive. I'm no killer. Hell, I'm no pusher. I never meant for my life ta turn out like this. I'm in way over my fuckin' head. I wish I could just go home. I wish I never woulda seen a fuckin' needle. Please, Liv. I ain't got enough left to even put up a fight. Please, don't kill me."'

Slim got down on his knees, lower even, he put his face against my knees and sobbed.

"Please, please, don't kill me! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I just wanna go home!"

I looked at Logan, and he'd put his claws away.

I think he was expecting that Slim had become a villain, not some whey-faced cadaverous young junkie, with red-rimmed eyes whose grey skin, mottled with tracks and bruises and sores was stretched thinly over a bag of raw bones, weeping and bleeding in a filthy flop room.

It started to dawn on him that when I blew out of New York, I was a crazy, desperate bum, looking to get out of the street one way or the other, on my way to flop with another crazy, desperate bum, and that, at our worst, we had lain in that bed, too annihilated to move, unsure who had pissed the bed, waiting for something to happen, even if something was death.

And if we hadn't bugged out of TO, and Slim hadn't shot me, I'd probably still be there.

"I think he's had enough." Logan said, quietly.

"Yeah. Alright, Slim. Go wash your fuckin' face. I ain't gonna kill ya. Somebody else might, though. You're in a lotta fuckin' trouble, you fuckin' junkie asshole!" I told him.

I put my guns away.

Slim washed his face in the sink in the corner and came back and sat down in his chair.

"What kinda trouble?"

"The feds are after whoever you're with. And when I say the Feds, I mean fucking S.H.I.E.L.D. You got three choices, Slim. One, you do not pass go, you do not collect two hundred dollars, you go directly to 'Nam. To the front. Two, you start singin' like a fuckin' canary. You give me names, dates, faces, places, everything you know, and they'll ship your ass to rehab and back to New York, where you get to be an informant. I'd pick two. You got a chance to live, at least. And you get to go home to Queens."

"What's my third choice?"

I pulled one of the autos, and put it to his head.

"I'm under orders to bring you in, alive, but you and I usedta be friends, and you got me outa New York, so I owe youse one. First, you give me the information I need. Then you get your gun, stand up, by the wall, and fire into it, a couple of times. Then, I come you to you with my gun, an' shoot you in the head. I know what I'm doing, man. I can make it quick and painless. I tell my superior that you started shooting and it was me or you."

"What if you came here and found me dead? OD'd?"

"Doesn't work. How would you rat if you were dead? You're gonna rat, whichever way. You owe me, Slim, you junkie motherfucker. C'mon. Take door number two. At least ya know what's waitin' for youse behind it."

He thought about it.

"Fuck it. If I'm gonna be a rat, I might as well rat all the way. An' I get a chance to get clean, right? And go home?"

"Right."

"Okay. I'll do it. I'll talk."

"Not here. Everybody in this place is gonna see us carry you out, dead. You look like fuck on a cracker. An' you got enough blood on you that you could be dead, they'll buy it. We'll take you someplace secure, then you can talk."

Cleaned up, and in clean clothes, at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, Slim looked more like his old self, which made us both feel like shit.

In about an hour, he was going to be headed to a rehab in Minnesota in a S.H.I.E.L.D jet under an assumed name.

After that, Slim MacLeod was going to be back in his old neighbourhood in Queens, working the street for the G.

If he stayed clean.

If he fucked up, bang zoom, off to 'Nam.

But that was in an hour.

They gave him methadone, already, so he wasn't in as bad of a way, but he still looked flinchy and twitchy and miserable, in his prison-looking clothes with everything he owned jammed into a black canvas rucksack they gave him, chain-smoking.

When I sat down across from him, he put his big, rawboned, long-fingered hand on my shoulder, touching the bullet scar, and tears ran down his face again.

Slim was never a bad guy, never a tough guy, he was just a fucking degenerate junkie; the shit got the better of him.

And, in better days, him an' me, we used to have a good time, together, so I felt pretty bad, too.

"I'm sorry, Liv. I'm sorry I hurt you. I know ya don't believe me. And ya don't understand."

"No, I understand. Hell, I wake up from a drunk with blood on my hands and my clothes at least once a month, wondering who I hurt. How I hurt 'em. If they're dead. Hoping they weren't an innocent person. I go look at the unsolved murders, praying none of 'em happened anyplace I was. So far, so good."

No use lying about it to Slim.

"After this is over, are you gonna get clean, too?"

"There ain't no over for me, Slim. In a coupla years, they'll cut you loose, maybe set you up with a job. Send you back to school. Give you a chance to be a regular guy with a regular life who made some dumb mistakes when he was a scared, stupid kid who didn't wanna go die in the jungle. This is my life. I never had to go to 'Nam to find a jungle, and that fuckin' concrete jungle is my home. I'm a drunk and a whore and a killer, and I'll die in the street with my boots on my feet and a gun or a knife in my hand. But I ain't plannin' on goin' anytime soon. So, don't worry about me. I'm the King of the Jungle. Like fuckin' Tarzan. I'm tough. I'll make it, somehow. I always do."

"Jesus, Liv, that's no kinda life for anybody."

"Yeah, I know. But it's my life. It's my fucking job. Somebody's got to do it. Look, maybe after awhile, in the City, I'll look youse up. You can do some work for me, maybe."

I got up.

"Take care of your junkie ass, Slim. I'll be seein ya in the street. I gotta go to work."

"Hey, Liv?"

"Yeah?"

"Look, I know I got no right to say it, but, Napalm, you weren't doin' any better than I was. You look better, now. Looks like Wolverine's been takin' care of you. Uncle Sam's gonna take care of my ass, finally, but, I think if I wanna see you in the street again, you better take 'er easy. Stay out of it for awhile Liv. It was eatin' you up. Like it did to me/"

The funny thing is, I knew he was right.

"Slim, what did you shoot me for? I don't goddamn remember. All I know is I was in the car, sleepin', an' you shot me. Did I do something to you? I been worried I done somethin' to ya. I don't remember."

I really didn't.

"Not really. I wanted the money, I needed the dope, I saw you were asleep and…I don't know why I did it. I can't remember." He admits.

"You're lyin', Slim."

"I can't say it to you, Liv. I can't."

"Yeah. I thought so."

"I'm sorry, ya know."

"Yeah, I know you are. Good luck, Slim."

"You need it more than I do. Take care of yourself." he said.

He's worried about me.

The half-dead junkie who shot me, he's worried about me.

Jesus, I must be in a bad way.

I got up and I walked out of the room, and Logan was waiting for me.

"You alright, darlin'?' he asked me.

"Sure I am. Let's go. We got a mission to plan." I said.

We headed outside to the car, and we got in.

"Well, Slim's gonna be on his way, soon. That's good for him, he gets another chance. He does me one better, he gets out alive. Not me. Like I told Slim, the only way I get out of this life is feet first."

Well, then I laughed.

Like, I usually do.

And I pushed in the lighter and reached over Logan for the Jack in the glove compartment, and had a drink.

Like I usually do.

When the lighter popped out I got a cigarette out of the pack, and lit it, and put the lighter back, and then I reached for the keys in the ignition.

But my hand was trembling.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, and I could have played that off, but then these goddamn sobs started backing up in my throat.

I turned the key, anyway, and pretended to cough, but Logan wouldn't let me pull out.

You know what?

I cried.

Now I don't cry very often, I'm not the weepy type.

I can count the number of times I've cried since I was eleven on one hand; this time was one for the thumb.

And I hate to cry in front of anybody, because when I go, I really go.

It's pretty bad.

The only person I ever cried in front of is my father.

I'll howl and moan and wail like a goddamn dog somebody kicked the shit out of with steel-toed boots on.

I was so fuckin' embarrassed, but the cork was out of the bottle now, and I was howling and moaning and wailing, and there were just tears running out of my eyes. My nose was getting all snotty and it was really fucking terrible, I hardly had time to put my cigarette in the ashtray.

"Go take a walk, Logan! A fuckin' walk!" I managed to sob.

"That's alright, darlin'. Everybody cries. You had a real hard year. You just let it all out now, and don't worry. The ol' Canucklehead will never tell anybody he saw you cry."

So, I cried, and Logan hugged me, and I cried some more, and I did it until I was all cried out, and then he drove us back to Pop's apartment, and I was so goddamn tired, I just went right to bed, and fell asleep, and didn't dream about anything.

**VI: Logan**

You ever seen a grown man, a real hard case tough guy, some goddamn son of a bitch really just break up and cry?

That's the worst.

You get some crybaby, when they start pissing and moaning, it doesn't mean shit, but when you get somebody like that to cry, it just about breaks your heart.

I have seen all the Liv Napiers there are on this trip, because they've all been on display.

Sure I've seen the college-educated scientist, and the merry, brawling, horny Irish drunk, and the well-trained and highly-disciplined mask, and the stone cold killer.

But I've spent most of my time with a smart, pretty red-haired mischievous bad fairy with a thousand watt grin and a mind like a steel trap, and that one, the Liv that sits under all the masks, to quote the poet, I saw her ache just like a woman, and she makes love just like a woman, but she breaks like a little girl.

It did break my heart, it broke my fucking heart to see her cry the way she did; she cried like a wild animal that was dying slow and in pain. Whatever the fuck it was that had been slinking and crawling around in her guts since she turned the Brooklyn Slasher into a work of Jack the Ripper, I think a whole lot of it came pouring out of her, right then and there.

Well, after I tell you what I did next, any of you ladies who are feminists might be mad at me, but let me tell you, if it had been a man that did it; and all that I've seen, I've seen grown men, hard men break the same way, I would have done the same thing.

I got on the phone and called Bruce Wayne.

I told him all about the place where we found Slim, and the shape he was in, and the way that horrible scene played out between the two of them, and how he turned out, and about what Liv said about Slim getting another chance and her leaving the life one way.

Feet first.

Then I told him about this big mission that Nick Fury wanted Liv to undertake.

The Bat, he was quiet, for awhile.

"What do you think, Logan?"

"What do I think? I think that your little girl needs to come home and be with you, an' her brother, an' if he ain't at Arkham, her Pa. I think you an' everybody who knows her need to watch every fuckin' move she makes until Eddie gets back from 'Nam, and take good care of her. Then ya need ta get him on it, she actually listens ta him. I'll cover Wednesdays, she can come up to Westchester and spend time away from that goddamn city. I know you can't keep her off the street, but what she's got to have from everybody she fuckin' knows, every day, is as much kindness and tenderness as they got to give, because this poor kid needs it. She needs to spend more time at work and in school, and sober, and with her friends if she has 'em, and less time on the street roaming around like a mad dog, rabid an' foamin', bitin' everybody until she meets somebody who'll shoot her. The last thing she needs is more blood an' destruction. She's fuckin' drownin' in it."

Bruce Wayne let out a long sigh.

"I couldn't have said it better, myself."

"You got any ideas?"

"Well, what if something came up at the lab? Something big. A project she could use to complete her masters thesis. Something that Dr. Manhattan absolutely needed his assistant for that just can't wait. Some very important project that required all of her concentration, something that would take up most of her time that she wasn't in school for the next, oh, three or four months, so that all she really had time to do was go see you on Wednesday and spend time with her friends and maybe only be out on the street two or three nights a week. And, coincidentally, just maybe there could be something I got embroiled in out there, something that only she could help me with, so that when she was out there, it was with her brother and I."

It took me awhile to get his jist, and then I realised that Bruce Wayne is the second in command of the JLA for a real good reason, and it's a good thing Clark Kent doesn't know what it is.

"I'll stay near the phone." I said

**VI: Bruce**

Getting to Jon in Vietnam was hard, talking to him was the easy part.

Despite his reputation for coldness, Jon was not the unfeeling iceberg a lot of masks thought him to be.

He was quite capable of caring about the people who were close to him and his research assistant and protégé was definitely one of those people.

According to Jon, the war was going to be over within a few weeks; he had turned the tide quite well, so that would make it all look good.

"I tell Liv all the time that I need her to spend more hours in the lab and less on the street. But I never thought to make it sound like there was some big project. There are, of course, several big projects, most of which would work for her thesis. Especially considering my long absence, and hers. Yes, I see. If I appeal to her, not as a scientist, but as a fellow mask…that would work. I'll contact her, when, in the morning?"

"Yes. Before she gets a chance to wire C-4 to anything."

"Good idea. I'll make sure it's an official visit. Don't worry, Bruce. We can handle this."

The next call that Bruce Wayne placed was just across town.

But, it was quite possibly one of the hardest decisions he had ever made.

Before he picked up the phone, he remembered when the Joker had showed up that night, in the Batcave, with the blackened body wrapped in a sheet.

It was little more than blackened bones and gristly sinew, still smoking.

His wife's burned body, the mouth of the blackened skull open in an eternal silent scream.

They tried to burn his little girl, too, but he had arrived in time to save her.

He didn't know where else to go for justice.

The Joker had told her to stay with the car, but Bruce had seen the tiny child, soot-covered and sobbing.

He laid the body down and Bruce covered it as the toddler, weeping, ran to her father's arms.

Bruce remembered the horrible look on her little face, from over her father's shoulder.

Often, he saw it in his mirror.

Was it a curse or a blessing that Liv was so young, she forgot what had happened?

She remembered her mother had died, but not how.

The Joker had told her it was an accident, that her mother slipped on some wet concrete steps after a heavy rain, and fallen to her death.

In her waking hours, Liv's mind accepted that.

Grudgingly

Bruce was pretty sure, however, that Merrie Napier's death haunted her dreams.

Batman picked up the phone and hung it up again.

Then, he thought about the day he went to Arkham, at the Joker's request, to visit him, before he had adopted Liv.

"I want you to take her, Bats. Of course, I'll want to see my Livvie, but, she's not all like me. Or my father. Or his, for that matter. After three generations of brilliant madmen, I married a woman who was such a good woman that there's good in Livvie. I don't know much about what it is that normal human beings feel, or what they do. I loved my wife, and my father and my little girl. And there it ends. So you take her, Bats. Raise her to be a good girl."

Liv tried.

She really, really tried.

She went to war with herself, a war that she sometimes fought alone, on the streets, in places no other mask would go, in the service of people no other mask would help.

Liv was determined not to follow in her father's footsteps, even if she and every criminal in New York had to die trying.

I am Batman, yes, but I am also a man.

I am Bruce Wayne, and Trivelino J. Napier is my stepdaughter.

She's a good girl, truly, sometimes I think there's more goodness in her black little heart than there is in mine, because she tries so hard.

He is the Joker, yes, but he is also a man.

He is Dr. John O'Rourke Napier, once known as Crazy Jack, or the Red Hood.

She's his daughter.

The man is a twisted, vicious psychopath, has been since he was a tiny child, but he loves his daughter, beyond all reason, so much so that he gave her to his enemy, so she could have a chance to escape his horrible fate.

Did we save her, have we tried so hard for so long, to see her die an embittered drunkard, to choke to death on her own vomit in a flop room?

Or to be murdered in the street by a gang of thugs?

No.

We didn't.  
Sometimes, you are a man, before you are a mask, on either side of the cape.

Bruce picked up the phone.

"It's your nickel!" the cheery voice chirped.

"Dr. Napier? We have to talk."

"I see. Excuse me for a moment. Harleykins, go do the dishes, or something. This is important. Go on. Shoo. Or Daddy will get angry with you. Terribly sorry, Mr. Wayne. She's like a child. Is this about our daughter?"

"Yes. She's alright, safe in bed, asleep and unharmed. These past few months have done her some good; she seems to be mentally stable, again. But I've just been talking to Mr. Howlett. He and I think she need a little more time in the classroom, in the lab, and at Grossmann's with her friends or at home than she does on the street or in the bar."

"I couldn't agree more. Do we have a plan?"

"Yes. We do. Dr. Ostermann will be returning to the US, soon, and he's going to arrange a special project that will take up most of Liv's time, and she'll be able to complete her masters."

"I like the sound of that. She's overdue to become the third Dr. Napier. She spends far too much time in the street and at the bar."

"I agree. The problem is, even with work, school, and her friends, she's probably going to have two or three nights a week for street work. I would like it if she did them with me. But she won't, unless she has to."

"Genius, Mr. Wayne! Sheer genius! Yes, I follow you. Something that only she, Trivelino J. Napier could assist you with. Now, let me see. Who do I want to send up the river…Edgar. Edgar Jacobi. He's a third rate drug peddler in mask's clothing. And he's always and forever plotting feebly against me. Suppose I let one of these plots go. Suppose my life is in danger. And suppose you find yourself torn. Is the enemy of my enemy my enemy, or my friend? But I, the Batman, have to get these drugs off the streets. I know. I'll Call the Harlequin. Where I cannot venture, she will go. And it will wrap up with a big public drug bust and good press for Livvie, and I'll get a few Edgar-free years. Of course, we'll have to let Mr. Blake in on it, but I'm sure he'll go along. And that will give him a chance to see Livvie in action. Push him a little further down the road to taking her on as an apprentice."

"You do realise, I'll need details."

"Of course. We'll have to plan every move. And for every contingency. We can't meet, though. But, we can exchange information through Miss Kyle. She'll be in touch. Oh, and Mr. Wayne?"

"What?"

"You're not doing anything bad, you know. You're getting a nauseating drug pusher off the street, and helping out our little girl. And I won't ruin it for you with any of my usual shenanigans. She's my little girl, too."

"I know that. So, Miss Kyle will be in touch?"

"Yes."

"Well, good night, then."

Bruce sat by the phone for a long time with his head in his hands.

He didn't even see his stepson until Dick came and sat with him at the table.

"You must think I'm a horrible man, Dick."

"You did what you had to do, Bruce. I understand. She's my little sister, you know. Don't look so sad. Liv's coming home."


	6. Autumn

**Chapter Five: Autumn**

**Toronto, Ontario. August, 1970**

**I: Logan**

Alright, so this is where it all comes out in the wash.

You know me, the ol' Canucklehead, I know where all the bodies are buried.

And if somehow all you mask watchers out there get your hot little hands on this, all of you who can quote me chapter and verse one when this happened and how that happened, you can believe it or leave it, but just let me tell you this much.

I don't recall a whole lot of things from my past, or a whole lot of people, but Eddie Blake, you can say what you want about him, he's my friend.

We served together in the Invaders, and after the war, he used to trek all the way up to Howlett to visit me, when I spent, hell I don't quite know, anymore, maybe ten years on the mountain.

You know the first familiar face I saw after the Hudsons brought me back into what Old Black Tom calls the world of men and men's things?

Eddie's.

He was the one got me back into the States, and I still think he talked Charlie Xavier into giving me a chance with the X-Men.

And although it's a piece of shit war, I was proud to serve in Vietnam with my friend Col. Edward Morgan Blake.

So, what I'm getting around to is, I haven't been what you might call completely honest with you.

I did lead you to believe that I was just bumming around after I got over the number Mel did on me with her powers and then, coincidentally, when I had, oh, all of the Great White North to just bum around in, I just kinda bumped into a crazy woman I hardly know.

Purely by chance.

Then I decided, well, what the fuck, she wears a mask, I wear a mask, I might as well not go home and let my team, who are like my family, and my girl know I'm alive and well. I might as well not just return this woman to her stepfather and let him worry about it.

Hey, I got an idea.

Why don't I spend three or for months in the woods with her, and take the long way around for some grudge match she has with a junkie she knows.

Fuck the X-Men, they can row their own boat for a coupla months while the ol' Canucklehead gets himself some of that hot, horny, homicidal pussy.

Like you can't get that in New York.

Or at the X-Mansion.

Did you have some difficulty swallowing that?

Yeah, I thought you might.

Worse, it makes me look like I'm an even bigger asshole that I really am.

The truth is, the Old Man came home from the logging camp the day before I was going to leave Howlett to go back to NYC, and told me I had to come up to the camp with him the next day, because I had an urgent person-to-person telephone call from Saigon coming.

At nine sharp, same as the call asking for me came in.

It was Eddie, alright, and he had a story to tell me that I didn't want to hear.

He'd got word that "the kid" was in a bad way, a real bad way, that she pretty much snapped after she turned the Brooklyn Slasher into a bloody piece of modern art, and that she'd run off to the Great White North with shell-shocked Slim MacLeod.

Worse, nobody had heard from her for awhile.

Not him, not Jon, not the Bat, not Joker Jack, nobody.

He wanted to know if I could I go find her, and get her straightened out.

Then get her back to New York, and keep an eye on her until he got back from 'Nam.

That may explain some things to you, but I'm sure it's raised some more questions.

How do me or Eddie know Slim MacLeod?

Napalm didn't tell you the whole truth about that poor son-of-a-bitch.

Top brass stuck us with him, in 'Nam. He was supposed to be commando material, but the poor bastard wasn't ready for Operation Wrath of God.

By the time half his tour was over he was a shell-shocked, broken-down wreck of a junkie, and we had to cut him loose from combat missions because he almost got the whole team killed in the field.

Slim got at dishonourable discharge, and I guess me and Eddie figured that would be the last we'd see of him, but well, at least I was wrong.

Now Liv thinks she's strong enough for ten people's weights; she fights for the underdog so it's no wonder she ends up picking up strays.

Slim was just another one.

Now, I guess you got one more question.

A personal question.

Okay, Wolverine, you're a real tough guy, and she likes tough guys, and the old healing factor gives you a little more stamina than the average bear, and so you say, even though you're a short guy, God has been good to you.

Yeah, and you're the only tough guy in North America with a big dick? Hell, don't they kinda grow out of the ground where she hooked up with you?

This is a woman who doesn't listen to her father, the Joker, her stepfather, Batman, or her boss, Dr. Manhattan.

Maybe she listens to the Comedian.

Sometimes.

But why the fuck is she going to pay any attention to you?

Why would he call you out like you're the 7th Cavalry.

What are you to her?

What if I level with you as much as I can?

I knew Napalm a hell of a lot better than I let onto you when I walked into her camp.

If I hadn't, the state she was in, if I was just a guy she met in a bar, once, she would have put a hurting on me that would have killed anybody else.

Maybe you were wondering about that.

How does a girl from Brooklyn survive on her own, injured at first, in the wilds of the Great White North, and then how is it she can pretty much sleep rough for three months?

You know she was never a Girl Scout.

Well, maybe she got extensive survival training from an expert, one feral to another.

No, Liv's not a mutant, but if there is such a thing as a feral non-mutant, she is one.

I remember the first time I ever saw her crouching on the ground, sniffing the air, her lips curling in something a lot like a snarl.

I could see right then that she had an animal in her, maybe one as wild and dangerous as the animal in me, and somebody had to show her how to keep it on a short leash.

And your last question would be, I guess, why am I telling you all this, now?

You'll see.

Anyway, the morning after Liv broke down was a morning full of surprises.

The first one was when me and Liv woke up to the sound of pounding on the front door, and she opened it in her GI-Issue underwear, her eyes heavy with sleep, and met with a uniformed marine and a S.H.I.E.L.D agent.

"Well, good morning, boys. What can I do you for?"

"Ma'am, is that regulation underwear?' the surprised Marine asked.

The S.H.I.E.L.D agent gave him a dirty look.

"First Sergeant to you, soldier!" he said.

"Relax, G –man. I don't have my stripes tattooed onto my body. But that's an idea. I still got a little room on my bicep. Yes they are, soldier. I wear 'em so when I gotta get outta bed in a hurry, I'm not standin' around half-naked." Liv cheerfully replied.

"You got too many tattoos for that, Sarge." The Marine joked.

Him and Liv had a laugh, but the S.H.I.E.L.D Agent was all business

"Agent Napier, First Sergeant, we have a communication for you from Dr. Manhattan. He has requested an immediate reply." The S.H.I.E.L.D agent told her

It was what you call short and sweet.

_Trivelino,_

_ Situation winding down in S.E. Asia. Will be back in NYC by Labor Day. Important project awaits us. National security matter, profound implications for our theories. Related to your thesis. Please return to NYC by Labor will start on Tuesday following. Have spoken to Dir. Fury. Will get someone else or minor drug matter, if you acquiesce. Please do. You are needed in the lab. Hope your vacation was restful. Will see you soon._

_ Jon_

Liv looked at the paper, and almost immediately, she had her answer.

"Please inform Dr. Ostermann that I will be at the lab at nine, sharp, on the Tuesday after Labor Day."

The Marine was pretty fascinated with Liv's tattoos.

"Permission to ask you a question, Sergeant."

"Granted."

"What's it say across your chest?" he asked.

The last thing you want to to is ask Napalm about her tattoos.

"It says 'You can die today—I'll die tomorrow' in Gaelic. The Russians used to say that in the commie camps. Worse than Hitler's. And see this tattoo all over my neck that meets up with the pentacle between 'today' and 'I'll'? It's Celtic. Supposed to be protective. Look at my hands. See? Hell on one, Fire on the other. And the skull and crossbones tattooed on the back of my right hand? That mean's no quarter. And the third Eye tattooed into the palm of my left hand? Maybe justice is blind in the courts, but in the street, you have to keep all three eyes open…"

She stood there and her tattoos to the fascinated young Marine, until that S.H.I.E.L.D. man just dragged him away.

She was sorry to lose an interested audience, I could tell.

After Dr. Manhattan's emissaries departed, Liv was apologetic with me.

"I'm sorry, Logan. I'd like to do this Canadian mission, but you don't know Jon. That may sound casual to you, but that's his way of saying your vacation is over, get your ass home now, I need my assistant, pronto, and I've been fucking around in 'Nam too long. I have to get back, I got work to do."

Well, that was fine with me, I had done what I came to Toronto to do, and I had to get back to the Institute before the kids come back, anyway.

No, that wasn't the big surprise.

The big surprise happened after I went back to bed.

The goddamn phone rang twice, and then they hung up.

Then, it rang again three times, and they hung up.

Then, it rang twice, again, and they hung up.

It rang again, and Napalm jumped out of bed like her ass was on fire and her head was catching and she ran into the kitchen to answer the phone.

Now, that was a signal if I ever heard one, but I had a pretty good idea who might be calling, so I just closed my eyes and pretended I didn't know shit.

**II: Liv**

Boy, when I heard "The Signal", did I hustle my ass out of bed and to the phone in the kitchen.

I mean, the last time I talked to him, I was still in New York.

"Jesus, Eddie, I can explain."

Because it was Eddie Blake for sure as shit, his sarcastic laugh crackling over the international line.

"Sure you can, kid. And you can use twenty dollar words and give me solid gold fuckin' excuses. You lost your shit. Maybe ya had the right idea buggin' outa New York, But what the fuck made you just picked that asshole MacLeod to do it with? What did I tell youse about him?"

"I thought he was my friend, Eddie. Maybe he still is."

"A guy who shoots you ain't your friend, kid. That prick was never your friend. You better get that through your thick fuckin' skull. But hey, about you losin' your shit, I wouldn't worry about it. Ya don't need to come here to find a jungle. We got plenty of that in New York. Everybody cracks, at some point. Better to get it over with while youse is still young, when people will cut you some fuckin' slack. Now, you are goin' home like the Doc told you, right? Let Nick get somebody else to blow up half of Toronto."

"Yeah, I am. If Jon needs me to work, shit, I gotta go back to work. So, it's really over, huh?"

"Finally. But shit, you gotta guy who can make himself the size of Godzilla an' turn people to bags of wet mush with a wave of his hand, you ain't gonna lose. You know I asked Dick to send me the Doc back in '68? You know how many American lives he coulda saved if he woulda listened to me, the sunnuvabitch?"

"I know, Eddie. The man's a fucking moron."

"They're all fucking morons! Everybody in this country is goddamn lucky me an' Supes and Steve an' Nick are around, God only know what the fuck would happen without us! Jesus Christ, kid, I can't wait to get outa this fuckin' jungle. I'm so goddamn tired of this Third World toilet and this fuckin' bullshit and the heat an' the fuckin' bugs, and the goddamn tropical fuckin' diseases and these gook broads! An' you, Jesus, you just about killed yourself while I was stuck in this shithole. Kid, don't you listen to anybody but me?"

"Awww, you know me, Eddie. I don't even listen to you half the time."

"You know what kid? You ain't funny and it ain't cute. Yeah, well, you better listen to this. You got no more slack left. I'll be comin back ta New York on the day you're supposta come home. After you drop Jimmy off, you come see me. I'll be waitin' for youse."

"But it won't be Thursday."

"I don't give a fuck. You think I don't remember how to keep your crazy ass in line?"

Well, the way Eddie snarls that at me, I have to hang onto the countertop, because my knees went wobbly.

"Jesus, Eddie, you wouldn't believe how I fuckin' miss you! New York don't seem like home without you in it. It's like there's a big fuckin' hole right through the middle of everything. Eddie-sized. Speakin' of which, you better not gimme the goddamn Vietnamese clap or some shit. Because I don't care if you got army green crabs doin' manouvers on your balls, you're mine the minute we get behind closed doors, ya mean ol' sunnuvabitch."

Eddie laughed and laughed.

"You kiddin' me? You wear two fuckin' rubbers when you screw one of these broads, and then wash your balls with lye soap. Hey, kid, if you're so hot for me, why don'tcha do me a real big favour. I been in the jungle two fuckin' years. Wear a goddamn skirt for me, huh? An' some women's underwear? Just this once?"

That made me laugh.

"Okay, Eddie. Just this once."

"So, Jimmy's takin' over Wednesdays, huh? That's one more day nobody has to worry about you lyin' dead in an' alley, someplace. I'll have somebody to commiserate with."

"Oh, poor Eddie."

"Kid, you don't know what tryin' to keep you this side of the dirt until you can get your shit together is like. I don't care what the Bat says, nobody could take it, more'n one day a week."

"Yeah. I'm bad, an' you love it."

"Guilty as charged, doll. Now listen to me, kid. This is important. Don't make any fuckin' trouble on your way back to New York. No car wrecks. No bar fights. No puttin' on your costume an' doin' cowboy shit. An' when ya get back, ya got work ta do, and school to go to, and your beat to walk. You ain't a fuckin' teenager no more, ya gotta spend more time workin, an' less time drinkin', fightin' wreckin' cars an' takin' on fuckin' cowboy suicide missions. You get me?"

"Oh, yes sir, boss. Whatever you say, boss. Your wish is my command, boss."

Eddie laughs.

"You little fuckin' wiseass. You gotta lotta balls, talkin' to me like that. I'm gonna screw youse right into the wall, baby. You know that, right?"

That was kind of, yunno, pillow talk.

Like me calling Eddie a mean son of a bitch.

"I been lookin' forward to it."

"I'll bet youse has. I gotta go. I'll be seein' you around, baby."

"I'll be waitin' on youse, Eddie."

I hung up and so did Eddie, and when I went back in the bedroom to get dressed, Logan was pretending to be asleep.

That was just as well.

**III: Logan**

After Liv got dressed, I sent her out to buy some supplies for the trip home.

Because I had some thinking to do.

They both hung up.

I was thinking about how I was taking over Wednesdays, and how the Bat, and all of Napalm's family, and her friends, and Eddie, even, how they were going to get one more good night's sleep a week, knowing she was someplace safe.

I was thinking about the last four months or so, good and bad, thin and flush.

I was even thinking about whatever cold winter night that was when Liv got Vic Creed out of a jam with the C of H, and took him to bed, in some flop in Brooklyn.

I thought about the way she could hardly believe I gave a damn about her, and the way she talked to Eddie, like she wasn't sure if he did or not, but she didn't care.

As long as he gave her someplace to go where she could get a little kindness, a little tenderness.

There hadn't been a lot of either in the world for Trivelino J. Napier.

I called the Bat.

He'd just got back from work.

"This is Batman, speaking. Go on."

"This is Wolverine. I got a package of dynamite for you. Where d'you want me to deliver it?"

"To the Batcave. In a lead lined cage. You know, I've thought about building a room and just keeping her down here. But, now that you're in on it, and the Comedian's coming home, and she's had this time to heal, well, things might get better."

"So, what's your plan, and where do I figure into it?"

"Logan, are you sure about this?"

"It's blood between us."

"I'm calling it Operation Human Cocoon. The idea is to try and monopolise as much of Trivelino's time and energy every day as is possible, to make it physically impossible for her to get into a whole lot of trouble. Jon's going to keep her in the lab, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 9 until 1. After that, she has to do her research for her thesis, which we figure she'll do till around four. Then she usually goes to Grossmann's. Laurie's going to go with her, and I've spoken to her friends Paulie and Benny, they'll look after her until it's time for her to put on her mask. At which time, after she hears about the situation, she'll be working with me, and Dick. And, occasionally, the Comedian. You'll be in charge of Wednesdays. Sundays she always spends at home. And we're going to give her Saturdays at liberty, until its time to go to work, so she doesn't suspect anything. We'll carry on as long as we can. And then, if I haven't got her apprenticed to the Comedian, or convinced she needs to go to rehab, or both, I'll think of something else. But I am not having another year like this past one."

I noticed he said nothing about Thursday afternoon, or Thursday night.

Did he know?

Did he at least suspect?

Probably.

"What situation."

"The, ah, Moloch situation. Moloch doesn't like the way the S of S treats him, like he's a second-class dope pusher in supervillain's clothing. He's planning some kind of power play, to carve out a big piece of the heroin trade for himself, and to stage a coup and bump off the Joker, and his own arch-nemesis, the Comedian. Now, naturally, I have an interest in stopping a gang war over drugs, and trying to stem the flow of smack into the city, and I will infrm the Comedian there's a plot against him, but the Joker is my sworn enemy. Not to mention, I don't have a network of street-level informants. So, I'm going to need the Harlequin's help. And so is her father. And maybe, just maybe, the Comedian, too."

"That's some kind of plan. Do you think she'll go along with it."

"Of course she will. We-I planned it that way. Have you noticed that Liv does things a certain way, on certain days at certain times?"

Notice?

"Yeah. It took awhile ta get used to."

"Well, this plan lays a nice new schedule out for her. Between me and…her father, she's used to doing things that way. That's when we know she's going to have the Troubles. When she goes off the rails."

"You think she'll still have them?"

"Of course. But we'll all be ready."

"Jesus, ya make it sound like you got everybody she knows together in a room, and briefed them."

"I did. We even had the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan on an international conference call from Saigon. I mean business, Wolverine. My little girl is not going to die like a dirty dog in the street for her father's sins. Or mine."

**New York Thruway, September, 1970**

**III: Liv**

I'm not much on big speeches and long goodbyes.

Especially not to Logan, I mean, I'm going to be seeing him in a couple of days.

But we had both been awful quiet since we crossed the border, and with the exit for Salem Center coming up, I knew that if there was something that had to be said, it was now, or never.

"Hey, Logan?"

"Yeah, darlin'?"

"You know, you really saved my ass, this summer. I don't know why you did it. Any more than I know why you decided to train me, of all people, like your Dad trained you, and I ain't even a mutant. An' I got no idea why you'd want it to be blood between us. But, thanks. Because I admit it. I need alla help I can get."

"You know what it comes down to, Liv? It's like the way you make a dog mean. When he comes to you hungry, you starve him, when he comes to you with his tail wagging, you beat him. It doesn't take long to beat and starve and abuse a dog to the point where he's mean enough to kill you himself if you turn your back on him. Darlin' you're the man an' the dog all in one person. It ain't enough for you to have the world subject you to abuse, misery, and bullshit, you help 'em along. You got yourself half convinced that there's nothin' good an' kind in this world for you, so you better forget it. But you can't. You see what you did to yourself when you tried. A long time ago, I tried the same thing."

He shifted around in his seat, a little.

"When I was a kid, I had a brother. A half-brother, but he was all I had. I don't recall much about where he came from , other than after Pa went away, my older brother came to take care of me. Now he was a hard man, and he was a bad man, but not to me. But he used to preach that gospel of hate and hardness to me, the one you've been trying to sell to yourself. And I believed him, for awhile. But it led him to do something unforgivable to me, through the first woman I ever loved. And now, I don't have a brother, anymore. I got an enemy, instead. I hate him. I hate him worse than anything. But, goddamnit, he's still my brother, and it hurts me in my heart how I hate the son of a bitch almost as bad as the things he's done to me."

Logan clammed up, then, for a few miles.

And I started putting two and two together.

Eddie called Logan "Jimmy" because he'd known him long enough to know his real name.

Vic Creed, he called Logan 'Jimmy" too.

"Jesus Christ, Logan!"

"I see the way you flit around Vic, like a moth dancin' around a candle flame. He brings out the worst in you, and that's the way he likes it, an' you don't mind it at all. Maybe you don't like him much, and you think he's a real sunnuvabitch, but there's something about him that makes you keep coming back, and it ain't that he's a real blond. It's the bad in you, darlin'. The heart of darkness. The beast. It tells you there's no goodness or kindness for you in this world, so you got no business showing any to anyone else, and you might as well do what you want, because there ain't much to stop you. That's Vic's way. Don't make it yours."

That was a whole lot to swallow in one gulp, and I took a long time chewing it over before I spoke again.

"Logan, for the record, I think Vic's an asshole. I mean, he was good for a laugh or two, and he tried to get all buddy-buddy with me, but I didn't rip him up into pieces as foreplay, like he thinks I did. I'm done dancin' with him. And I can see his way of doing things never did him any good. I mean, we're going back to where you live, in a mansion, with your own suite of rooms. Private bath. Three squares a day. Cable TV. Gym. Swimming pool. Jet plane. Free beer. You teach combat to teenage girls in tank tops, and you got a girl waiting on you and a major superhero team of which you're a respected member. Plus a government paycheck. And what does Vic have? Shit, he lives in a hole in the Bowery where he barely scrapes by doing grunt work, mostly for the Brotherhood, getting the odd mercenary job and coming home to his flop to spread Rid-X all over his balls because some junkie hooker or barfly gave him the crabs again, hoping the cops or the feds or the Avengers or the X-Men don't show up. I mean, it's like with Pop and my Daddy. They're both geniuses, and they're both a little crazy, and too violent for their own good. But Pop, he's got a mansion, and a helicopter, and a car, and he's NYPD's go-to guy, and the co-chairman of the JLA. Sure, Daddy's the head of the Society of Supervillains, but he lives in a two level bunker, 1000 square feet apiece, a few miles under the wreck of his and Grandpa's dreams, and half the time, they got him in a closet of a cell at Arkham Asylum. You don't have to worry about me switching to the other side of the cape. Dr. John O' Rourke Napier didn't raise any idiots. He always told me, Livvie, if you go into this life, you make sure you're a hero, not a villain. You make more money, you get more prestige, you don't end up in jail or in hiding, and there's usually a nice paycheck in it, with good comprehensive medical and fringe benefits. I know what side of the bread the butter's on, believe you me."

Logan looked at me for a minute like I was as crazy as Dr. John O'Rourke Napier, and them he laughed, and I laughed, and we laughed all the bad feelings right out the open windows as we took the exit off the thruway.

**X-Institute, September, 1970**

**I: Scott**

In a way, Scott felt a little silly, standing around outside the mansion, in his costume, kind of like an idiot.

"Scott, why are you suiting up?" Jean had asked him.

"Well, I wanted to welcome Logan back. Officially. And formally meet the Harlequin."

Jean gave him a funny look.

"Scott, you know Liv. You met her very informally in 1967, and several times since then. The last time I saw her, you were with me. I think it was in March. We all went to that Who concert. Remember? Liv went off with Keith Moon for a week, and they found them both here."

"I had no idea he was a mutant."

"Do you have another explanation? Besides, Napalm and Logan are not going to be formally dressed."

"Well, I'm team leader. It's my job."

"Okay, Scott. The rest of us will be inside the building. Have a good time."

Scott had felt pretty good about that, but, after standing around with no pockets to put his hands in for a few hours, he was beginning to think Jean was right.

He was about to go in when he heard the gates opening, and a big black shiny Buick that looked like it was an early sixties model came up the drive.

It rolled to a stop right beside him, and Napalm stepped out.

She looked pretty innocuous, in her Levis and tank top, with her long red hair in pigtails, and her feet in a pair of ramshackle Converse basketball shoes, smiling her big thousand watt grin at him.

She had a new scar on her shoulder, a nasty-looking bullet scar, one he imagined would warrant a new tattoo from Paulie Blake's father, Ivan the Bear.

"That looks a lot like a .45 calibre slug at point-blank range." He said.

"It sure was."

"How's your arm?"

"Well, it works. I've shot with it, and fought with it, and cooked with it and, well I'll leave the rest to your imagination, but, it works. I was havin' a lot of pain in it until I got checked out by the S.H.I.E.L.D doctors, turns out it was out of place at the shoulder, yet, but they fixed me up. It'll be just fone for me to go and fix up your truck. Jeeez, Scooter. Why so formal?"

Scott hated it when people called him "Scooter".

But not when Napalm did it.

She had a certain way she said it, she almost made it sound like a dirty word, with a very dirty kind of fondness, like she was promising him, someday, Scooter, I'm going to help you knock the starch out of your underpants.

Scott cleared his throat as Logan got out of the car, smirking.

"Well, I ah, wanted to welcome Wolverine back to the team, and you too, as uh, as you're going to be with us on a regular basis, now, Harlequin. Beast and Jean wanted to know if you had a little time, on Wednesdays, to assist them with their class schedule. How do you feel about teaching basic Biology and Physics to high school mutants?"

"A job? You're offering me a job?"

"To quote the Professor, you have the qualifications and it will keep you off the streets."

"Charlie wants to give me a chance?"

"We all want to give you a chance."

"Oh yeah? So, what's the pay like?"

"Lousy. But you get full use of all our facilities."

"Good fringe benefits." Logan cut in

"I see. Room?" Liv continued.

"Yes."

"Office?"

"Maybe."

"Comprehensive medical?"

"Yes."

"Vision and dental?"

"Of course."

"Good. My VA benefits leave a lot to be desired, and I can't get government benefits from work while I'm still technically a student. And you better believe as banged up and fuckin' crazy as I am, I gotta see a lot of doctors. And I get another place to flop. I'll do it. Shit, I gotta keep busy, man. My idle mind is always the Devil's Workshop."

Logan laughed to himself.

Liv turned to him.

"Well, I'd like to hang around a little more, Wolvie, but I gotta urgent appointment in the city at noon, an' I gotta be back in the lab tomorrow, and I haven't been home for months. So, I guess I'll see you Wednesday." Harlequin said, hands in pockets

It was a casual goodbye, but when her hands came out of her pockets, the way she kissed him goodbye wasn't casual, at all, and Scott looked away, for a moment.

"You sure will, darlin'."

"Bye-bye, Scooter Pie. Tell Charlie I'll call him ta make arrangements about the job. Gotta fly."

Liv got in the big black car, and roared off.

As soon as she was gone, Logan actually got down on his hands and knees and kissed the sidewalk.

"Logan?" Scott asked.

He got back up again.

"She's a helluva girl, Cyke, but there were times I thought I'd never live to see my home again."

"What do you mean? You mean, like, in bed?"

Logan laughed.

"In bed, in the car, in a tent, on the ground, up against a tree, in a bathroom stall, in the sink of a men's room bar in the Yukon Territory, and anyplace else semi-private you can think of. I'm a tired man, Cyke. I had mornings I was glad she had a cooler to keep the beer cold, so I could use a can to ice up my balls before I had a drink and went back into the tent."

"You know what you gotta do, cowboy?"

"Pretty much."

They started off back towards the mansion.

"Wow. Shit. Because that's what they say about her. Jesus, it makes me nervous when she calls me Scooter. Especially when she calls me Scooter Pie. But I could never cheat on Jean."

"Don't worry about that, Cyke. When Napalm wants you, she'll take you. You won't have a choice. And if you know what's good for you, you'll just go along with it, because I don't think she likes it when somebody tries to stop her from taking what she wants."

Scott turned a whiter shade of pale.

Logan was gilding the lily, a little, of course.

Then again, if Liv was having the Troubles and she got full of booze and there was a wild hair lying across her ass just right, well, you never know.

"Isn't that something like rape?"

"You can't rape the willing, Cyke."

"I have no interest in that girl!"

"Now what makes you think you can tell a lie like that in a spandex suit?"

"Oh shit!"

"Try thinkin' about somethin' disgustin' before we go in."

Cyclops opened the door, and Wolverine followed him into the X-Mansion.

Finally, he was home.

(_Author's Note: One more chapter left!)_


End file.
